


Life Finds a Way

by Kyn



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Belonging, Bumblebee (Movie 2018), F/M, Freeform, Friendship/Love, I'm Pretty Sure The Old Cranky Medic Accidentally Wants to Adopt Her, Low Morale, Mechanics, Medical, No specific universe, Post-Bumblebee (Movie 2018), Post-War, Repairs, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, Sense of purpose, Slow Romance, Touch-Starved, exhausted, reunited
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2020-10-14 04:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 92,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20594369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyn/pseuds/Kyn
Summary: Charlie Watson was nobody.Bee had only ever been in a small California Beach town in the first place because his memory had been missing. After getting it back and stopping a broadcast that would have brought the entire Decepticon army to Earth, he'd been gone: Off to find his commanding officer—his fellows-in-arms—and report in ready for duty.Off to be a hero.





	1. Letting Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare for longfic. Subscribe or bookmark as is easiest for you to keep track of it. First few chapter will come out pretty quickly. 
> 
> SEPTEMBER SHOUT OUTS TO MY SUPPORTERS! (DON'T SPOIL ANYTHING YE BASTARDS)  
\- If you'd like to get involved with our little community, you can find me on [Discord](https://discord.gg/MsSfwNb)  
\- If you'd like to support me emotionally, please just leave a lovely comment, I treasure all of them <3

_"—that's right Phil, the weather is a balmy 65°F here in downtown San Francisco, but that's not the only good news! This is just in: Last night our brave men and women isolated, attacked, and destroyed one of those alien robot invaders known colloquially as the Dece—" _

She turned off the radio. 

Drumming her fingers on the corvette steering wheel, Charlie pretended to find a tune in the endless honking of the San Francisco rush hour. _Bum da da da bum, whoa, bum, bum bum da, da, da. _  
  
Charlie Watson was nobody.

She wasn't a member of a special bloodline that had been dealing with giant alien robots for (allegedly) generations.

She wasn't the bearer of The One Ring, she had no super powers, and there were no magical artifacts in her grandfather's basement. She had no connections. She wasn't a soldier, or a politician. She certainly wasn't The Reluctant Boy Hero who’d blundered in, fallen on his face a few times, rescued the girl, saved the world, and driven off into the sunset to live happily ever after. The Chosen One, Charlie was not.

Charlie was just the girl stuck in traffic behind Uncle Hank on their way back from a car auction.

And Sector Seven hadn't bothered to check in on her house in over a year. They'd been quick to realize Bee had only ever been in a small California Beach town in the first place because his memory had been missing. After getting it back and stopping a broadcast that would have brought the entire Decepticon army to Earth, he'd been gone: Off to find his commanding officer and report in ready for duty.

Off to be a hero.

...

Belatedly, Charlie remembered something: She scrabbled in her glove compartment and found the shopping list Ron had passed her on the way out the door. 'Milk' it said, and Charlie raised her brows. She glanced at the back but, nope, nothing else was listed there.  
  
_Alright then, Ron. Milk._ She rolled her eyes. _Right after I get out of this traffic jam and help Hank lock up._ Charlie sank back into her seat. She really didn't mind the traffic. She had nowhere to be that was more important than the present.

Charlie's coming of age had been a realization she'd had nothing to prove to anyone: Not her classmates, not 'the boy,' not her mother, and not even the ghost of her dad. Charlie didn't have to be special, or the world's best high-diver, or snag a hot date. She could just be herself. She could just let go and coast to wherever her life took her. 

Well! Heh, there might have been _one _person to whom Charlie had still wanted to prove herself after all that: Uncle Hank. But seeing as he'd just finally brought her to an auction and let her help with a number of salvageable car purchases, Charlie was feeling pretty vindicated in all the hell he'd put her through... 

* * *

Picture it: October of 1987.  
  
The Corvette was up and roaring like a puma, right? 

So less than twenty-four hours after its maiden voyage, Charlie took it down to her uncle's scrap yard, parked where he could see it's bright new coat of wax, and came in with one demand:

"Hire me."

Hank kicked back and shrugged. "You aren't a mechanic."

"Listen Uncle Hank," Charlie leaned on his desk, "I'm sick and tired of squirting ketchup on hotdogs. I'm good with cars."

Hank only laughed and blew her off. "I'm not going to hire an unproven kid."

Charlie Watson squinted at her uncle.

Then she turned out of the shop without another word. She got in the corvette. She pulled out of the scrap yard, got on the freeway headed out of little Brighton Falls and down to the County Vocational School.

* * *

May of 1988 rolled around.

Four classes tested out of; twelve classes taken six at a time; bam, done.

Charlie walked into Hank's office, threw a two-year Associates Degree onto his desk, and demanded:

"Hire me."

Hank kicked back and shrugged. "You don't have the experience."

"What do you mean I don't have the experience," Charlie leaned on his desk. "That's what I need a job for!"

Hank only laughed and blew her off. "You don't even have your ASE certification."

* * *

Oh, December of 1988...

The whole experience of trying to find a mechanic to apprentice her had left Charlie self-conscious about her breasts. 

One of Hank's old mechanics worked an hour out of Brighton. At the end of a very humiliating and sexist job hunt, the mechanic laughed, said he remembered a time when the Union used to turn away people like _him, _and gave her the job on the spot.

ASE certification required two steps: Passing a test, which she'd aced with flying colors, and accumulating two thousand hours of work experience. Two thousand hours roughly amounted to a solid year of forty hour work weeks. 

So Charlie worked _sixty _instead.

She left home every day at four, worked like a dog, got home after dark, and dropped dead almost upon arrival. Maybe it was worth it. She was fixing everything: From broken farm equipment, to passing lorry,s to private propeller planes, to motor boats, to stranded foreign cars from the playboy mansions down the coast. 

The day after Christmas, Charlie walked into Hank's office and threw her certification onto his desk.

"Hire - me," she demanded.

Hank kicked back and shrugged. "You know what I really need is someone to help me with the books."

Charlie leaned on his desk. "Are you kidding me?"

Hank only laughed and blew her off. "I'll find somebody else."

* * *

Soon enough it was January of 1989.

Mom was waving nursing school applications in her face again, and Charlie wasn't happy about it. She repeatedly asked Charlie whether she'd seen 'that nice young boy' lately.

(Mom, he lives across the street. His name is Memo. Of course I have seen him. He's out mowing the law for his parents every Sunday.)  
  
Charlie told Memo she was starting to think her mother had Hank by the balls and had threatened him into never hiring her.

Memo told her he was getting a job in accounting, and that there was a rapid course in bookkeeping for business entrepreneurs at his school. It was just three weeks, and only a hundred dollars. 

As Charlie considered the money in her left hand pocket, and whether giving Hank one more try was worth it, Memo asked if she ever thought about 'him.'

Charlie asked who he meant.

"You know. Big and yellow?"

Charlie said she was sure 'he' was fine and changed the topic. Like most eighteen... nineteen... soon to be twenty year olds, she lived her life like there wasn't some kind of giant robot war going on across half the planet. It stayed mostly in foreign countries and the flyover states, anyway. Worlds away.

Memo casually suggested Sally Watson might be afraid of Charlie's interest in cars because she was secretly nervous Charlie might take off across the country to find Bumblebee. Charlie was insulted. Maybe, just maybe, Charlie was into cars because, like, _duuurrr_, everyone on her father's side of the family was in an automotive trade? 

* * *

Three weeks later and it was February of 1989.

Charlie walked into Hank's office and threw her newest certification onto his desk.

"Hire me," she sighed, and waited for his rebuttal.

Hank kicked back and squinted at her a long moment. "You're overqualified."

Charlie squinted at him and didn't argue or walk away. She was on to him now. Him, and maybe Sally Watson.

Hank didn't look particularly happy. He shook his head and said, "Are you really sure this is where you want to end up kid? In a scrap yard?"

Charlie leaned over dramatically, hands clawed and snarled, "What do you think the whole point of this was?!"

"Aren't you shooting kind of low?"

"Lower than a hotdog stand!?" Charlie screamed, nearly in tears.

Her uncle stared at her with this three thousand year old stare, and then closed his eyes, shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders. "Then I guess I can't say no," he decided. _"You're in, _kid."

(She and Memo had celebrated that night with a case of 3.2 beer he'd smuggled out of his grandmother's basement during the holidays.) 

* * *

...The traffic jam inevitably let up.

Charlie came back to the present to flick on her sunglasses and drive. She was smirking to herself and thinking of those shiny bold black numbers in her uncle's books: A ten percent profit increase from the year before! _Who's overqualified now, huh?_

By the time they'd pulled in to the scrap yard, the sun was already going down. Charlie made her rounds to help lock up the place, and waved goodbye to the last guys to leave.

May 1st 1990, the calendar behind her uncle's desk said. Wow. She'd been working for Hank for a little more than a year, but there was more to it than that: Charlie's birthday was coming up on the 24th. This was usually the time of year she caught herself thinking about Volkswagen Beetles. 1987 to 1990. Had it really only been three years? Felt like another lifetime. One she'd never get to go back to.

Then, something _really weird_ startled Charlie out of her reverie: As Uncle Hank shuffled up to let her go for the evening, he suddenly took her by the shoulders and said, "You did a good job today, kid. Really good."

The complement blindsided her. Uncle Hank didn't hand those out except once in a blue moon. 

"You even look more and more like him," Hank smirked and let her go. "Every day."

Charlie tried to decide if being told she looked like a man was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek complement, or if her Uncle was saying something deeper. She smiled and gave an awkward little laugh, and then drove home wondering why the whole thing had left her feeling numb and apathetic.

It ought to have been the proof she'd finally achieved all her biggest goals in life. Plus she'd just had the honor of being told she was getting to be more like her dad.

After she'd gotten home, pulled into the garage, and cut out the engine, Charlie Watson spent a couple minutes sitting quietly in the driver's seat, feeling confused. She had a job. She had a car. (A sexy car.) She _belonged _in a place she'd built for herself. Why had Hank _saying so _thrown her off her game?

_Who knows?_

Charlie eventually shrugged, jumped the corvette door, and strolled past her cassette box. Her fingers lingered on a black and yellow tape in the upper right hand corner. Seeing it there, she smirked, and let all her discontent go. 

Bee.

Oh, Meeting Bumblebee in the Summer of '87 had been one of the best experiences of her life, and she'd always treasure it. The biggest lesson he'd ever taught her was that it was okay to let things go—a funny thing to say, seeing as Bee was this _feisty_ underdog who was always trying to goad her into races and competitions! Maybe she'd matured as a contrast? But all adventure stories ended somewhere; and she was a small town gearhead with no particular talents, whose big role to play was already behind her.   
  
She'd ended up on top of an antenna while evil alien robots shot plasma at her, cutting power lines and control wires, and for thirty insane minutes had been part of the two man team that literally saved the Earth! She felt like she'd passed a Not Damsel in Distress test just managing to help someone way, way, way more competent than she was.

And in that time, Charlie had learned to let her grief over her dad's death go. She'd let her guilt go. Her interest in her peers. Her fear of diving. 

She'd successfully let Bee go.

Eventually, she'd also come to let her sense of helplessness go. She'd let go of all interest in a giant robot civil war she had no means of affecting. Charlie was focused on what was in front of her now: Cruising on through her life, soft top down, wind in her hair, doing what she was good at, and dodging every pothole as it came. 

That was what everyone always said you needed to do to be happy: You had to live in the present. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Oh boy, Charlie. 
> 
> Maybe Uncle Hank just knows that this isn't where you're meant to Bee. :3


	2. Tense Shift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be making a habit of including all songs used in this story:  
[Enjoy the Silence (1990)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diT3FvDHMyo) \- Depeche Mode
> 
> I have no interest in making a 'songfic.' That said, we have a character who talks with the radio and another character who falls out of bed with her headphones on. I would be doing a disservice to the source material if I didn't do myself a bit of musical research...

Charlie forgot the damn milk.

She'd putzed around the house until dinner, only to see Ron's face fall at the interior of the refrigerator. It took her a few moments to realized she'd zoned out on the short trip from the scrapyard to the house and auto-piloted straight past the grocer without stopping. 

"I gave you a list," Ron pouted.

"Yup, you sure did." Charlie felt like she'd just kicked a puppy, and got up to help set out plates and silverware as her penance. Otis snickered at her. She glanced at the microwave clock, but she already knew it was nearing eight in the evening and the grocer would be closed. Everyone hated the gas station milk. "I'll grab some before mom gets back from the graveyard shift. First thing tomorrow."

"I'll put a post-it note on your wheel," Ron agreed.

"Yeah, okay." Charlie would have rolled her eyes– if she hadn't been a grown-ass woman whose stepfather was going out of the way to make herself and her little brother dinner. Or if she hadn't already failed whilst armed with a list with just one item on it. "Thanks."

As always, Ron spent as little time in the garage as was humanly possible.

"Your mother wanted me to tell you both about something," he mentioned over dinner. "We're looking at houses in the Bay area."

Charlie paused, fork halfway to her mouth. "You're moving?"

"We've been thinking of a change for awhile now. For all of us!" Ron smiled as if it were some kind of delightful present he was quite proud of. 

Charlie took a moment to recall a lot of parents 'moved' and didn't take their adult children with them. So, yeah, making sure the house was a three-bedroom and could fit Charlie _was _actually a gift.

...They were going to leave? This house? Her dad's house?

"Isn't that great?"

Charlie smiled to give Ron that affirmation he needed, and let Otis handle the excited babbling part. She looked back down at her food and focused on getting it into her mouth.

* * *

_He'll never find me again. _

That was the _last_ thing Charlie ought to have been worried about. First of all, San Francisco might have been the closest city to Brighton Falls, but living there was still going to put Charlie at a lengthy commute to and from work each day. The weather was also different—it rained a lot—which meant Charlie was going to have to take steps to protect her car from rust.

After a year of steady wages, her pocketbook was pretty thick. Should Charlie maybe just find an apartment nearby with covered garages? Where would she put all her (dad's) tools? Maybe it was better if she just went along with the move for awhile, and saw how it turned out?

_This is the only landmark he has. He wouldn't know where else to look._

Charlie had to be up in five hours and she could - not - sleep. After wandering pointlessly around her house for a few minutes, she of course gravitated to her garage. As always, she looked through her cassettes and picked out the yellow and black tape that didn't belong there.

Because it wasn't a real cassette tape.

She'd found it weeks after Bee was gone and, whenever she folded it open, a little hologram appeared above it. Charlie wasn't sure exactly what it was, but suspected it was a radar: A bunch of circles, and a blinking light off far in one direction. Most of the time it pointed northeast, the direction where the Autobots and Decepticons tended to show up on TV. 

In the back of her mind, she remembered calling Bumblebee 'Her Best Friend.'

She wondered if she'd said it to Bee like Otis said it to the dog, where you just sort of squeezed it and wished you could feel the same amount of connection to any living human person, period; where it was kind of bittersweet, because it was a placeholder.

Nah.

Charlie was pretty sure she'd meant it in a human-human way. It was kinda weird meeting your best friend at the start of summer, hanging out a couple confused months, and then never seeing them again. But Charlie'd never had many friends, and honestly didn't need many. 

Mom and Ron seemed to think Charlie ought to be lonely, but Charlie figured it wasn't like that. She was different from them. She didn't need people around her the way they did. She preferred being limited to the friendships she made with the other mechanics at the shop. It wasn't like she had much in common with her graduating class. She _definitely _did not go along with any of the blind dates Mom tried to set up.

Charlie did figure if Memo stuck around long enough and no other girl realized what a good person was, she'd probably end up with him, but honestly it wasn't high on her list of priorities.

(What Charlie wouldn't have given for a _single picture. _A Kodak. A Polaroid. Anything.)

She sighed.

Even though her role in Bumblebee's mission had been small, Charlie would always feel pretty special just to have been part of it. To have been the first person he'd met, the person who hadn't freaked out; the person who hadn't called the police, or ruined everything, or gotten him killed. She'd helped him, repaired him, gotten him back on his feet.

She thumbed the hologram projector, and smiled despite herself. It felt like a heartbeat monitor. Something she could check, every once in awhile, when it seemed her world had cracked, and time had been lost, and her heart raced as she tried to figure out who she was. Seeing that little blinking dot always calmed her down. She was ninety percent sure that it was Bee's personal signal, and that, as long it remained on the radar, he was guaranteed to be alive.

_I'm never going to see him again._

As on every sleepless night before, Charlie put the tape safely back away. This was the first time she'd ever felt sad about it. 

* * *

Three years she'd gone unbothered by anything. Mostly not thinking about it: Never worrying, never getting nostalgic at the sight of a brightly painted muscle car, and not even batting an eye when Otis brought home a 'Bumblebee Transformer Actionfigure.' Heck, she'd barely seen enough of _that_ to know 'Hasbro' had gotten each and every last single remaining detail wrong—except maybe the yellow. 

No surprise there. Weren't they the G.I. Joe company? Realism: Not their forte.

_" —Thanks Jerry!_  
_ So, let's get to the news of the day!_  
_ People are still talking about the big shocking news story unveiled yesterday,_  
_ That freedom fighters had taken down one of the alien invaders!_  
_ But with no video evidence to substantiate the claim,_  
_ Skeptics have been advising us not to—"_

Charlie realized what she was listening to and changed the station. 

Hm? Oh, _much_ better.

She yawned and danced in the driver's seat, fingers tapping after the guitar. 

_" ♫ Words like violence_  
_Break the silence_  
_Come crashing in_  
_Into my little world_  
_Painful to me_  
_Pierce right through me_ _ ♫ "_

She turned in to the grocery store, got a parking spot right up front, and waved to some old folk her mother knew pretty well but who Charlie couldn't ever remember the name of.

* * *

It's something simple that sets off her premature midlife crisis, and suddenly Charlie knows what it means to 'live entirely in the present.'

She's at the super market, a milk jug in each hand, and there's an unusually large crowd gathering around the newspapers and tabloids. She glances at them because the clerk is taking forever and the line is long. She see's the Enquirer, a magazine famous for running stories on bigfoot, mermaids, and turtle people living in the Manhatten sewers.

Time slows down and suddenly life contracts to a single moment, and nothing else.

There, splashed across the face of the periodical, is a picture about to leave every other news agency in the world green with envy. It's a picture of that 'robot takedown.' Only there is no victorious 'ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST' in capital letters across the top of the page. Instead, the Enquirer's headline is: THIS IS A WAR CRIME.

Because the picture is of an injured robot in red and white, bearing the Red Cross symbol on his shoulder, and he has no weapons extended. His hands are raised to plead as soldiers and tanks fire on him.

"I'm a medic!" the robot is quoted in blocky white letters, "I'm an Autobot! What's wrong with you humans!?"

The milk drops to the ground and busts out of its container.

The checkout clerk shouts to get her attention but she doesn't hear a thing. She books it out of the shop, drops her ass in the corvette, and takes in a deep, hard, painful breath.

Charlie is nobody. She’s not a hero. She’s not a soldier. She is not going to race off and leave her _life_ behind in some hair-brained scheme to throw herself in the middle of a war she can't do a single thing to help with. She's just some random girl who buys cars for scrap yards.

But in her mind, she sees the Autobot medic; sees him begging for his life. Then he's replaced by Bee, pierced through the breastplate by harpoons again; only this time Charlie's not there to plead for him to get up and fight back.

The rear view mirror catches her eye, and the reflection is the face of a stranger.

Charlie starts her car and grabs the gear stick. She twists in her seat and gets an arm around the headrest to back up.

She needs all the canned food in the pantry. She needs her tools—every last one she can fit in the car. She needs the 'cassette tape' Bee left her in the garage.

His dot better still be on there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DAMN YOU MICHAEL BAY, GET YOUR DAMN DIRTY ENERGON-THIRSTY HANDS OFF OUR ROBOTS.


	3. Base of Operations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late! I had a down!

It was as if there was a wall between herself and the idea that Bee still existed. Like he'd been an imaginary friend she'd been forced to grow out of because, you know, the imaginary part. No matter how close she got or how many miles she put behind her, Charlie never once got excited. She never started thinking 'I'm going to see Bee. I'm going to see Bee.'

She felt dread, actually. A kind of adrenaline-rushing, self-propelling, thought-eating dread. Charlie was going to find out what the hell humans had been doing while her back had been turned; while she'd been going through the dollhouse motions of her life, believing that was the right thing to could do; believing she somehow couldn't just jump in a car and go butt her nose in.

What good would she be? She'd be a liability. Some random civilian floozy flouncing into a war zone.

_Doesn't matter. _

She had three thousand miles to the last reported sightings of the robots, West Coast to East, and absolutely everything was in her way: The Rockies, the Mohave, the flyovers and Mississippi, the rust belt and the Appalachia.

But there was a spiritual pleasure in driving: In the freedom an automobile represented. Go far enough, long enough, fast enough, and you could feel a little bit one with the universe.

It was what Charlie had done the day she'd finally gotten this very corvette up and running again. She'd taken it to the coast, sunset on her shoulder, and that feeling Charlie had wanted—that sense of being close to her dad?—she'd gotten it. The wind had blown the tears from her eyes until everything inside her calmed down and mellowed out and found a kind of peace.

'It's going to be okay,' she'd realized, then. And as she'd crested a hill heading back into town, on that fateful first drive, she shifted gears to neutral and coasted however fast the terrain took her. Fast, slow, everywhere in between.

...Today, by comparison, it was an effort of willpower to stay no more than ten above the highway speed limit. The first time she stopped for gas and swung in to pay cash, she saw a grainy television hanging next to the cigarettes, turned to the news. It was showing that picture from the front of the Enquirer next to a line of talking heads, all sharing their opinions.

_"The fact of the matter is this: The Geneva Convention was entirely by humans, for humans, signed by human countries—"_

Charlie threw bills to the counter and didn’t wait for her change. 

* * *

Charlie slept that first night bent across the gear stick of the corvette with the top up, wrapped in the blankets she'd snatched off her bed. She wished, for the first time ever, that the 1959 C1 hadn't been a two-seater.

She snacked on gas station pretzels and jerky. She napped on the couches of state highway welcome centers. Lunch was cold spaghetti-o's straight out of the can. Days blurred together along with fields of corn and soy.

Somewhere around ten in the morning, on the hilly side of Tennessee, Charlie found her way into a Perkins alongside the highway and ordered whatever her finger landed on, so long as it had coffee as black as coffee came.

It felt like any other normal American morning.

Then a high pitched keen rose up somewhere in the distance, maybe miles away, and everyone lost - their - minds. People dove under tables or scrambled into the kitchen. Charlie looked around with a brow raised, still trying to finish her coffee.

Then it dawned on her what that sound was: An air raid siren.

"Get down!" someone shouted to their children. "Do you want them to see you?!"

_Them?_

Charlie lunged to her feet and ran for the door, dodging stragglers and old people traveling in the opposite direction. She turned her gaze skyward at the sound of jet engines, and turned just in time to see a white and red fighter plane burst out of the mountain valleys, smoke billowing from an engine. A drab set of three gray fighter planes rocketed after it, already shooting. Their guns sounded like nothing more than the crackling of Rice Krispies from this distance. Snap crackle pop.

_This is what half the world's been living with while I had my hands over my ears._

The alien jet hooked a hard left and the other fighters scrambled to turn after it. It passed over the town at a roar, leaving smoke behind. It was traveling so low, Charlie could see the big purple Decepticon stamps on its belly.

The three pursuing jets stopped firing briefly over the town. Then, as quick as they'd all appeared, they were vanishing back into the mountains. The sound of gunfire snaked backed through echoes and wind, interrupted by the very faint and distant whine of an alien energy gun.

When Charlie looked for her corvette, she instead came face to face with a terrified mother hugging her little boy off the ground. And the kid has this ageless look in his eye, like he'd seen some shit lately to make him doubt, but today had renewed his faith in humanity. In his grubby little hands, he had a Hasbro Transformer.

"It's okay Mom," the kid reassured. "It's only a bad one."

_It's only a bad one._

* * *

It took Charlie four days to cross The Continental United States, and by then she was roughly certain Bumblebee's signal was somewhere in the Carolinas. She drove up and down the interstates, checking her atlas and reviewing the cassette tape at every junction.   
  
Most of the time, Bee's radar dot stayed firmly in the Southeast; but, as she got closer, it started gliding its way up the side of hologram until it was due east from her. Okay! She started looking at state tourist centers for some additional orientation about the roads out here, and jotted street names and numbers on the edge of her atlas. A couple times she just asked the local gas station attendants.

Somehow she had to get east. East, and who knew exactly where? To some tiny little farming community, accessible only by one road? To some garage in the back of an antique collector's private property? To some random person's house? To a military base?

Charlie wasn't sure what sort of conditions she'd find him in: Whether Bee would be _alone, _or with _other Autobots, _or with some kind of human family, or in the Carolinian equivalent of Area 51. Technically, she didn't even know whether Bee would _recognize _her, or if all brown haired white chicks looked the same to him, the way orange tabbys all looked the same to humans. Hopefully, if she walked right up to suspiciously placed yellow car and knocked on his hood, he'd figure her out. 

Uhg.

The roads out here were commitments, all of them. They loped whimsically across cool plateaus of grass with clumps of trees and scraggy bushes, and not much in the way of human habitation or even farms. If Charlie got stuck out on them and couldn't find a gas station, she'd easily end up walking fifty miles before finding a house to call a tow truck from. As a precaution, she bought a gas can and refilled it at every station. 

The people, when they saw her, gave her strange looks; 'cause clearly this lost California girl with the fancy old car wasn't from around here. A few boys smoking cigarettes gave her low whistles, and she muttered something to get out of any conversations. 

* * *

Bumblebee's signal came onto the center of the radar, and Charlie, honest to God, felt like her stomach had left her body.

Did this mean she was close? She temporarily eased on her brake, staring at the dot way too long and nearly falling off the shoulder. Then she looked back up, righted herself, and dropped her foot back on the accelerator. She started zigging and zagging on country roads, trying to meander to wherever he was with the radar clasped between her thumb and forefinger against the wheel.

Charlie ended up passing him at quite a distance, so his dot flew briefly to the Northwest. 

Dammit! She hadn't seen another street! What if there wasn't one? That meant she needed to start checking drive ways, but the sun was hanging low in the sky back the way she'd came. The roads out here were as black as the ace of spades at night, and she wasn't entirely certain how she'd be received sneaking onto some farmer's land to look for giant alien robots in the middle of the night. 

He was _painfully close. _She couldn't just _give up. _

Charlie drove back and tried to estimate where she might need to turn in. She selected a gravelly dirt road that led a mile inland to some kind of tree farm, and turned about because it definitely hadn't gotten her close enough. A couple hundred feet from the road, with the sun dipping below the horizon, she threw the transmission to park, covered her face with her hands, and took a deep breath. 

She picked up the cassette again—

—Charlie perked up, watching the dot moving closer and closer. It hung a sharp right turn. Then the most beautiful sound touched her ears: the sound of a souped up pony car engine revving somewhere down the road, maybe as little as a quarter of a mile away. She grabbed her gear stick but froze when when she heard at least three other engines.   
  
_VROOM! (Vroom vroom vroom!)_

A yellow blur shot across the narrow stretch of road visible at the end of the drive way, with something silver on its heels and a truck roaring behind. Charlie's lurched forward in the driver's seat; she didn't need to look down at her radar to double-check who that was. 

Bee. Bumblebee. Bumblebeebumblebeebumblebee! Charlie needed to get on the road and—

—and... what? Honk her horn and flash her brights like a soccer mom? Chase after them at a hundred miles an hour? Stalk them in the middle of the night? What if they thought she was some kind of Decepticon, or just some weirdo human they needed to shake? What if they were on an important mission, and she gave them away? What if they _couldn't be bothered _to figure her out?

Those had been Autobots. Au-to-bots. That had been _Bumblebee _in the lead! And, _shit, _she'd just missed her chance to flag them down by any means necessary!

Nyyrrr—CALM DOWN.

It wasn't like Bumblebee's signature would disappear on her overnight! (Would it?) If they'd moved base by morning, or were generally nomadic, she'd still be able to follow. And she needed to give Bee the best possible chance of noticing that, _hmm_, that 1959 Corvette C1 in his rear view looked _strangely familiar..._

Where the hell had the three of them just come from, anyway? Could she wait there? See if they came back? Camp there until morning, at the very least?

Charlie took a slow deep breath, and eased out of the drive way facing _away _from the long-gone robots. She flicked on her driving lights, and her hazards, so anyone coming up behind her wouldn't cream her. She drove very slowly. Not a quarter of a mile back down the road, her brights illuminated something she hadn't seen on her first pass through the area: A dilapidated old sign that, in peeling red paint, read:  
  
Rusty Al's Appliance Repair and Scrap Yard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think you may have found an answer to your questions, Miss Watson. That does appear to be a great place to wait for the boys.


	4. Screw you, Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ENOUGH TEASING, ALREADY GIVE US ROBOTS.

Charlie maneuvered around the piles of old cars, air conditioners and microwaves, following a overgrown gravel path inwards. Her brights settled on a freestanding tin shelter capped by a sagging cloth awning. Precarious towers of stacked ovens and refrigerators peeked out on either side of a tall, dark opening.

The corvette crawled into a rough clearing before it. On either side of herself, Charlie could see loosely random appliances drawn up in a loose circle. The center of a camp for _giants_, maybe? Charlie rolled down her window and stuck her head out. Then she braked, threw the car into park, pushed open her door, and stepped out. It was so dark out here. Was anything to her left? Across her car roof? 

Nervous, Charlie folded away her soft top. It seemed every gust of wind across the scrap yard would rattle something. She found herself wondering if the Autobots had left in anticipation of _pursuit, _and her attention jumped back to the cassette tape she'd left on her seat. Picking it up, Charlie realized just how _dangerous _it really was. 

Someone—maybe the government!—was actively hunting down _Autobots. _And this, this device right here, it had worked to track one Autobot in particular from three thousand miles away. 

It could never, ever, ever, ever fall out of Charlie's possession. Ever. She started getting sick just thinking about it sitting in her garage for years, where anyone from Sector Seven could have come back to do one last sweep and maybe, somehow, found it. 

Turning away from her car, Charlie hurried up to the nearest stack of appliances. Was that a microwave? She stooped and bent the radar back into the semblance of a normal cassette tape, and stuffed it into the microwave's open door. There. If something happened now in the eleventh hour—if Charlie was ambushed by Decepticons or found herself in the middle of a military raid—they wouldn't find the tracker on her body. Bumblebee would be safe. 

Charlie hurried back to her car. That awning loomed high and ominous ahead of her—creepy, yes, but Charlie was pretty sure Bee could have waltzed in between the lines of junk without hitting his head. What now? Should she take a closer look? She had no flash light.

Oh boy, if Bee wasn't at the head of the Autobots on their return journey, she was going to be in for a hell of a time trying to explain herself. Maybe she ought to have picked up some poster board and written, 'I'm looking for—'

Who? His name wasn't actually Bumblebee; that was just what she'd called him when his memories had been missing, and she didn't know what his actual name was. Maybe 'I'm looking for the small yellow Autobot who can't talk.' Could giant robots read English?

Charlie slipped back into her seat, gave a hard turn of the steering wheel, and wiggled the stick shift, and idled slowly around the clearing, so she could shine her headlamps into the back of that awning. She sat up on the side of her door to squint at it. It... was likely Charlie could pull her Corvette in there but... nah, no reason to_._ The car was one of the safest ways for Charlie to advertise she was on the lot somewhere. And Bee'd recognize it, right?

She slowly turned off her engine. The wind and grasshoppers got louder. Charlie missed the radar already. She wanted to know when to expect him.

A rustle came out from under that torn dirty awning, and Charlie swung about to stare at it. That hadn't been a cat or rat sized rustle; Not unless they'd dislodged a bunch of gears and screws which had slipped down over one another.

"Hello?" Charlie asked.

No response.

Had... had one of them stayed _behind? _Charlie couldn't see much right now. She leaned over to reactivate her brights, and the high beams shot to the back of the awning and illuminated the the edge of... what _was_ that? A car? A Formula One Racing Car, tucked away in the shadow?

Oh Charlie was pretty sure she'd just found an Autobot. Maybe if she could explain her reason for being there, they could radio him, and first introductions with everyone else would go more smoothly?

Part of her brain said 'stay put, going after strange sounds is how chicks die in horror movies.' Another part said, 'being nosy's gotten you pretty far in life.' Charlie vaulted her door and her feet hit the gravel. She walked slowly up towards the doorway, and glanced down when her shoe kicked a particularly large rock.

She was standing in a footprint. A very, very large footprint; much bigger than Bumblebee's.

"H-hello?" Charlie called. She lifted her head. The grasshoppers were the loudest thing on the scrapyard. The sliver of interior space illuminated by her brights seemed oppressively narrow.

But that really was an old Formulate One Racer back there, and what she could see of it was frankly beautiful. What year? Maybe '79? 

"You're not going to fool me," she admitted aloud, approaching a little slower now between walls of washing machines and other appliances. "You're _literally_ the only car in here and it looks out-of-place. Are you an—?"  
  
A massive thing slammed down from overhead, shoving her into the earth so hard she thought her back had been broken and both her thigh muscles were pulled. A fallen appliance? Nope. A _hand._

"You humans are predictable!" an enormous voice roared from over her head. In the gloom and out the corner of her eye was a gun barrel the same size as her face. "Waiting until the others had left to finish off our wounded? Your inability to comprehend basic decency continues to sicken and astound! Who do you work for!? Who else is out there!?"

Her lungs were being crushed, which made it hard to answer "I'm looking for my friend...!"

"Oh of _course,_" the voice drawled, saccharine loathing for humanity dripping from every word. Whoever this was, he was out of fucks to give. "Just your 'friend,' is it?" He _spat._ Charlie had never seen much of a possibility for a mouth in Bumblebee's features, so to hear the robot above her spit—implying the existence of saliva—was somehow just as interesting as the realization she'd been baited.

That was the reason for the Formula One Racing Car: They'd parked it back here on purpose knowing it'd be mistaken for an Autobot, giving the home team a moment's advantage against any invader, attacker, or spy.

"I'm serious—!" she wheezed out.

"Hnh! We've seen plenty of how you humans treat your 'friends,'" muttered the voice over her head, and heat was venting down at her with every word. "The whole lot of you are like scraplets—a plague of _tiny butchers—_grinding up our corpses, imagining it'll teach you to make robot slaves for yourselves, ignorant of anything even basically resembling medical science! Are you a plainclothes agent of Cemetery Wind, or an unfortunate pet of Starscream's? I won't ask you a third time: Who do you work for!? "

"My uncle Hank!" Charlie flippantly snapped.

He unceremoniously picked her up, and slammed her down again.

For a couple seconds, Charlie was somewhere else, not entirely conscious. Then her chest, arms, and legs were all screaming from the pressure. Realistically speaking, she knew anything his size couldn't be _close_ to using all his strength right now, but she was just a flimsy rag doll in his hand.

"Try again." The mouth of the gun was laying on her this time, and hot air was rolling over her in waves from above.

"I'm looking for Bumblebee," Charlie croaked, defeated, tears spilling; she had no idea how to de-escalate this. No clue. She wasn't even a _people person,_ much less a diplomat. "I just want to know if he's okay..."

Hot air smoked above her, smelling like oil and burnt cork and radiator fluid and tons of other car smells. Weirdly, there was a very intense odor of iron on the air, like the smell of blood. Was Charlie herself bleeding? She didn't think so, but she wasn't sure what exactly had happened when he'd smacked her twice into the—

The gun barrel fell away. She couldn't see very well between the sharp lighting of her car and the dark depths of shadows, but she did see two, angular, glowing blue eyes sink into view, weakly illuminating a sharp nose, a grim mouth, and skin that might have been rubber or even silicone. He was _massive._

He snorted air and exhaust clouds billowed visibly from the vents along his head and chassis all at the same time, like he was breathing through all of them at once. Then the robot spoke again to her, with a sneer in it's voice, "Bumblebee _has_ made a habit of picking up stray organics when he ought to be focusing on the mission. But you humans would know his patterns by now." He leaned closer to her, contempt in the lift of his lip and the set of his teeth. He had _teeth. _"Your story's not convincing."

Charlie tried to breathe under all the pressure. To calm herself down. "Y-you're really calling him Bumblebee?" she asked.

"What kind of question is that?"

"It's just... Doesn't he already have a name?"

Blue eyes remained narrowed at her, as if he was pretty sure she was just trying to mine _him_ for information.

"I called him that, but it was only 'cause he couldn't remember anything about who or what he was. C-cause he looked so scared a-and confused, so it made him seem smaller, and all he could do was buzz. Like a little round yellow bumblebee..."

Her remarks were met with silence and not much change in facial expression. The head lifted up out of view. The heated breath or vented air or whatever it was eased up and stopped baking her, and the palm of the robotic hand arched up a bit, freeing her lungs. The thumb and forefinger kept her from going forward, and the pinky kept her from going back; regardless, she didn't try to move.

After what felt like hours but must have been less than a minute, the robot growled, "We will see what Bumblebee has to say."

_Bee really was here. He'd be here soon. You really have found him. He really still exists, and you really did look away and pretend that whole summer was just a hit blockbuster you'd been a huge fan of, instead of something real._

"Do not squirm. Do not run. Do not try to escape, or I will take a kill shot. I expect you can follow these _simple instructions_?"

"Yeah," Charlie breathed.

"Good." The heavy fingers dug into the packed earth, gathering her up firmly but carefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three guesses who this charmer is.


	5. I Think You Need a Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be nice Mr. Robot, we need her in one piece betimes Bee gets back <.<
> 
> Also thanks so much to those of you who commented, you strongly incentivized me to get you this new chapter ASAP.

The robot picked her off the ground. Charlie stayed obediently limp in his fingers.

Heavy weight rocked beneath her to the groan of metal and motors, ending in a thud. She couldn't see much past her own hair, but reasoned the robot had been perched on his hands and knees when he had grabbed her, and was now sitting back. Leaning into the wall, maybe? He placed her on the ground before himself, where he most likely intended to keep an eye on her. Then he let go.

Charlie stayed where she'd been put for a second, waiting to make sure this was her final destination and that he wouldn't flatten her if she moved. At first she intended to prop herself up very slowly, so that he didn't think she was trying to escape; but then she realized she was so sore and winded, she couldn't have gotten up quickly if she tried. She got to her elbows, and then her knees, and then she got her butt under herself and managed to sit.

The gloom was intense. Charlie squinted up through it and smeared hair out of her face. The robot's eyes were bright to look at, just like Bee's, but in a neon sort of way; they didn't illuminate much. She could see the basic details of a face and the armor surrounded it. The light bouncing in from her high beams was barely enough to make out some tonal variation in his paint, but no colors. He was much larger than Bumblebee,towering over her even while seated.

Where...? Where was his right foot? Realization struck her: "Did you stay behind because you're injured...?"

"Stay silent and be glad I am feeling tolerant."

"I'm a mechanic," she explained.

He gave a sharp, mean laugh. "You are a—" the next word sounded like four synthesizers growling different tones at the same time, but he translated for her benefit, apparently wanting to make sure she knew exactly what he thought of her: "—a _cave man,_ banging together flint and sticks."

On one hand, Charlie knew he was right. But on the other? She'd done a lot of mechanical work on Bee before he'd even been able to transform that first time, and then, later, she'd fiddled with internal motors and bits she hadn't even understood to help reactivate his communications module, which had led to him getting his memory back.

Still, if Bumblebee would be back soon, then Charlie had nothing to prove to this guy. So she let it go, and didn't argue with him.

"I'm-I'm Charlie Watson," she offered instead.

His mouth pressed into a wide, unfriendly smile; the sort of smile that said it was_ pitifully cute_ she imagined he and she were on friendly terms right now.

So Charlie sat there, bruised and a little winded, but ultimately closer to her finish line than she'd ever previously been. Bumblebee would be coming _here. _The chase was over. 

...Would Bee want to see her? He'd apparently been through a lot of shit lately, including shit humans had done to him, like taking the life of one of his—friends? Fellow soldiers? One of his people. If he didn't have much sympathy for humans right now, well, would she really be able to blame him?

"Sorry for ruining your day," she muttered, and looked anywhere but up at the giant alien robot. 

There were... some tools in here: Screwdrivers, a wrench, a collection of nuts and bolts all laid out in careful pairs and groupings. A long piece of tin roofing, which seemed to be serving as a sort of table or work palette. Spread over it were sorts of dismembered devices, most of which Charlie could recognize after working in a scrap yard. Others, though, they looked like the alien parts she'd seen in the gaps of Bumblebee's damaged chest plate, or whenever she'd taken her mechanic's creeper under him in car mode.

These were all replacement parts, weren't they? And Mr. Wanted-To-Squash-Her really was injured.

That corroborated the testimony she was already getting from her nose: Strong smells were in the air, some she recognized and some she didn’t. That odor of iron still persisted, almost like the smell of Otis’s chewable vitamins, or old coins, but way too much like blood to really ignore.

"You smell like your transmission is shot and your radiator is empty," she muttered. "You stink like—blood," she looked back up at him as it dawned on her she might be interrupting very important first aid operations. If Mr. Grumpy been working on repairing himself before she'd gotten here, that sure wasn't what he was doing now: He kept that gun trained on her at all times, and his eyes narrowed.

"What does 'blood' smell like to you?" he growled, and she wondered if robots had a sense of smell at all.

Charlie tried to figure out how to describe a smell, only to realize she didn't have many words for smells, and even those tended to be words synonymous with tastes. She could say blood smelled like iron, but, seeing as there was iron everywhere in this dump and it didn't have any especial odors, she doubted she'd be able to clarify. After fumbling half a minute without words, Charlie tried another approach:

"You smell like Bee smelled after—" _After the Decepticons tied him up and murdered him._

Charlie blanched.

The words wouldn't come. She didn't want to talk about this. Besides, she didn't have the proper vocabulary to describe the lightning sticks she'd ended up blasting Bee in the chest with to revive him. (Oversized cattle prods?) Whatever, it was just a bunch of unnecessary detail that'd go nowhere.

"After?" the (most definitely injured) robot growled, but she was too distracted to be intimidated, because Charlie's mind was back in that horrible experience:

Bee strung up on a hook, repeatedly being struck and stabbed and having things twisted inside him.

"They tortured him," she blurted unhappily. "They we’re looking for whatever his commander had sent him here for."

And moments after Charlie had managed to revive him, right as the glow was returning to his eyes and the color to his armor, human soldiers had appeared. (Men with guns, and tanks, just like the men who'd shot that robot medic to pieces on the cover of the Enquirer, as he'd pleaded his innocence with them). 

Human soldiers had dragged Bee away from her, calling him dangerous.Dangerous? He'd been _dead_ a second ago. Dead, and now they were shouting, 'Pull him apart, break him down into scrap!'

There was a scene in the movie E.T., where the protagonist screamed and flailed as men in biohazerous suits dragged away his weak, sick, alien little friend for study. Charlie knew what it meant to be that kid, now.

Well, uh, not that Bee was exactly 'little.' Okay, Bee was physical smaller than every other robot she'd ever seen—all three Decepticons _and_ the grump sitting before her now—but Charlie was obviously dwarfed by Bee. Aka: Not 'little.'

Still. Despite all the kick-ass fighting she'd seen him do, something about Bee always struck her as round and cute. A dare devil one moment; curious, innocent, and lovable as a puppy the next. _Bouncy. _And it wasn't just the fault of that VW Bug outfit he'd been wearing, either. 

Grumpybot had been studying her."When _exactly_ did you and Bumblebee part ways?"

"A-after we took down the tower they were using to broadcast a message about your leader." Charlie came back to the present. "There were two of them. Decepticons? Bee called them Dropkick and Shatter, but I don't know if he was just trying to give me English words to talk about aliens. They were both bigger than him, and he was injured, but they split up. He took them on one at a time. After that...

"After that, Sector Seven knew where I lived. And they had just been betrayed by the Decepticons so they weren't happy about giant robots in general; but I think their leader, whoever that guy was, he let us go? Everything was getting out of control either way. And, more importantly, Bee finally had his memories back and knew where his commander needed him to be. He's a soldier, right? So... it was time for him to head out, to go be the hero. So that's when and why he left." 

Her new acquaintance had a soon-to-be-familiar sneer in his voice again. "'Heroes,'" he mocked the term. "That's what all young mech want to believe they are."

"Well he was sure pretty heroic from where I was standing," Charlie mocked right back, feeling a little more sure of herself the longer this conversation went without death threats. "All I did was get him back on his feet and cut the tower cables; the Decepticons would have figured out how to fix them if he had lost. Instead, Bee got one of them while he was monologuing like a regular action movie villain," she snapped her fingers, "and took out the girl one by pinning her arms and letting a boat plow into them both.

"Which he nearly died doing! He was clearly going to sacrifice himself, and the only reason that didn't happen was luck, 'cause he got sucked under the ship instead of being carried along with it, and even then blacked out for a bit, with the military right next door."

Which made perfect sense to Charlie, in retrospect, as Bee had been dead not an hour previously. Had he recovered at all by the time she was saying goodbye to him the next morning? Should she have found him a place to rest? No, you know what: She didn't have to think about those things, because this guy sitting in front of her had as good as told her Bee was okay. She'd even briefly seen Bee, rocketing from zero to a hundred in no time flat!

The smell in here was intense. God. Really intense.

"You know," Charlie grimaced, "if you're holding off doing something important, like patching yourself up, because you don't want to take your eye off me, maybe you should temporarily put me in a box or something."

"Hmm!"

It was apparently the first thing she'd said that Grumpbot had liked liked, because he immediately reached for her. Charlie's eyes widened, because she'd only been trying to goad him into getting back to work on himself. Instead, big fingers wrapped around her middle, each feeling like rubber capped on the back by metal. He turned, lifted her up, and—Charlie cringed up protectively upon herself to fit!—he shoved her in an old refrigerator and closed the door on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Doh! Be careful what you wish for!


	6. Fool, I AM the Doctor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This review and comment rate is extremely encouraging! I can't resist!

Something heavy banged up against the refrigerator door from the outside, resonating through her bones. Despite what it sounded like from the inside, Charlie was pretty sure he'd just rested his knee or foot there to keep her 'box' securely shut while his attention was elsewhere.

She tried to stay calm. She tried not to resent him when, technically speaking, she'd volunteered. But all her brain wanted to do was think about Bee, and it didn't seem to know what to make of the information that she'd be seeing him soon. She tried imagining herself complaining to him about The Mean Nasty Bot Who Slapped Her Around. It wasn't cute, funny, or much of anything. It made her stomach twist with anxious nostaglia.

Hokay. Charlie wasn't claustrophobic, thank god, but she was in a space too small for any person. The stripped fridge wasn't wide enough on any dimension for her to crouch down, and it wasn't tall enough for her to stand. Her legs and neck would only be able to support this awkward crumpled position for so long.

One thing was for certain: The next time Charlie Watson wanted Grumpbot out there to do something, she was going to need to seriously rethink her strategy. 

_Try not to think about the enclosed space. Or how you've been shoved around like a toy. Or the limited oxygen in here. Try to pay attention to anything else. No, not the racing of your heart, Charlie. Listen to, uh. Well listen to what's happening outside._

There was enough movement out there for Charlie to be sure her sudden appearance a few minutes back had interrupted something important:

She heard pulls and snaps, and the sound of what might have been an acetylene torch. She heard general creaks of what sounded like poorly lubricated armor. And then she heard something she could see clearly in her mind's eye: the soft click-silence-click-silence of a wrench. The wrench was slipping. Slipping usually meant a person was not using the right wrench.

"I don't know what model of car you're wearing," she spoke up, "but it sounds like you're using a SAE wrench for metric bolts or the other way around. The sizing's just a little bit off."

Charlie had to imagine what kind of facial expression she'd induced, before a growl of, "It'll do," answered her. Either someone was too proud to change, or else he didn't have another wrench and was making due with short supplies.

She decided not to tell him she had wrenches in her car. She listened. It kept her mind off her cramping legs. A few minutes later, the frequency of wrench strokes and nut slippage increased. Charlie was sure this indicated awkward position with very few degrees of space for exercising torque, a situation where wrenches wen't much good. "Do you have a ratchet?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"If half of what you're fixing is car parts from Earth, then—"

"Primus, you water bags are annoying. Always have been. Almost—but not quite—as annoying as Jazz, and I cannot _fathom_ what inane mental heuristic drives a mind to pun at blatantly inappropriate time intervals."

"What?" Charlie drew a blank on what that was all about. Someone didn't like rhythm and blues? "I was just going to say our car bolts were designed to be serviced by smaller hands than yours, and even our mechanics get annoyed working in narrow spaces, which is why we invented ratchets, because they let you grip the bolt just once and then it only turns the bolt when—"

The refrigerator door was opened. Angular blue eyes flared down at her.

"I know what a 'ratchet' is," he growled in a way that said there would be problems if she continued to insult him.

"I'm sorry, I get that," Charlie apologized quickly and quietly, not knowing whether she dared to elbow her way out of this coffin he'd shut her in, for fear of him slamming it back shut and pinching her limbs in the door.

He eyeballed her. Maybe he saw he'd picked too small of a 'box' to stuff her in and felt a little bad, or maybe he was salty she couldn't transform into a smaller more convenient shape for boxing and make his life easier. Actually it was definitely the second one. Grumpbot seemed extremely unfriendly.

But instead of closing the door back up, large fingers invaded the refrigerator, and since she was already squashed she got a few bones and joints compressed as he gathered her up in his hand again and pulled her out.

This time he held her up in front of his face as if to more closely inspect her.

Oh boy: Her brief stay in the refrigerator had helped her forget how bad the smell was: Hot air, dirty car exhaust, blood, burnt oil. And whatever fluids he was leaking were dark enough for her to see tracks of it trailing down his chin from the corners of his mouth. The mouth! He had a clear, defined, human-like mouth, complete with what still definitely looked—at least in this lighting—to be teeth.

The similarity between his and human faces had her worried; didn't people only bleed from their mouths for rather serious internal injuries?

"You're _not_ okay..." Charlie realized.

Why had everyone left him behind in this condition? Or... was he just much _hardier_ than the average human, lingering on like this as he tried to repair _himself?_ Couldn't anyone else have helped? Was this a sign they'd been stretched too thin, and every man was required at... wherever they'd gone.

His now familiar sneer was very visible, but he didn't reply to her. Instead he turned and set her on the ground just beside his damaged leg. Half of it was missing, and the stub ended in twists of shrapnel.

"Before you assume I cannot perform this task on my own, and become cocky about your utilitarian value..." He turned over his hand extended an array of strange, complicated tools from the paneling around his fingers. Half of these tools looked like needles or corkscrews, others looked like needle nosed pliers and hex keys, and one even looked like some kind of stethoscope. The devices retracted, but the one thing Charlie realized they all had in common was that they were very fine instruments, for precision work.

"G-got it." Charlie had no desire to be flattened a second time.

"Good. Use your hands," he ordered, and directed her to the fluid-smeared stump, "reach into this aperture, seize the piping within, and pull it through. Input and output."

Charlie knelt, reaching into the stump as she'd been hold. She liked the feel of gears and plating under her hands, enough to ignore the viscous dampness of motor oil, enough to feel excited. Excited like the day she'd first gotten her hands a broken down yellow Volkswagen Bug, excited like when she'd tiptoed up to investigate the face of a giant yellow robot. Mechanics was a tactile thing for her.

She worked her fingers in past shards of metal at exactly at the place he indicated. The cables inside wouldn't have been at home on any car; they were more like pool filtration pipes, and were leaking something that tingled like static electricity. She felt around, found both tubes, and pulled them through. He accepted them from her, pinched them up between thumb and forefinger, produced a flame from one of those previously revealed devices, and torched the tips. Presumably to cauterize and seal them?

Charlie looked down at her hands, which were wet with substances too dark to ascribe a color in this lighting. The electric tingling hadn't stopped, leaving her hairs raised down the length of her arm.

She looked past her arms and noticed disassembled metal parts in a halo his knee, laying on either side of the broken stub. She realized this was what he'd been using the wrench on: he'd opened himself up to get access to and to stop the equivalent of internal bleeding. Then, even though being stuffed in a refrigerator was less than ideal, Charlie had made the right call in speaking up, and—

Booms and explosions in the distance, loud as fireworks, made her twist around in surprise. Charlie Watson had heard just enough fighting robots in her life to recognize what their fights sounded like, and this one wasn't stopping. Stricken by the realization the Autobots (Bee!) might be in danger, Charlie scrambled towards the light of her headlamps, towards the door, wanting to see if—

"Ow!" she cried as blinding pain erupted between her shoulders and against the base of her skull. The suddenness sent her stumbling. Shocked, and disoriented, she twisted back to see blue eyes flaming at her and a gun barrel raised and glowing. Had he-? No he couldn't have _shot_ her; she'd be dead. So what-?

Charlie rocked from foot to foot, winching hard and clutching the back of her head with both hands. God, that had hurt. In her shuffling, she accidentally kicked what felt like a small bar of metal. She looked down to see—

"Did you throw a wrench at me!?" Charlie Watson demanded.

"Pick it up, and move away from the door."

Checking her hands for blood but unable to see much in this lighting—particularly with her hands already smeared with Autobot blood—Charlie slowly leaned over and picked up the wrench.

Then she remembered he probably didn't have a second wrench of a similar size. No ratchets, either.

"If you were to blast me," she wondered aloud, "would it melt metal, too?"

His expression worsened. "You have three seconds."

Charlie got a stupid beyond stupid idea. "That's long enough for me to get my tools from the car and prove I'm not trying to run away," she decided aloud. "Wait here."

"Two-!"

"I swear to God I'm coming back!" She tucked the wrench in her rear pocket, turned her back on him, and ran. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charlie whyyyyyyy!? Just sit still until Bee gets back, nooooo!


	7. Drumroll, Please.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHARLIE BE CAREFUL HONEY.

_Oh my God oh my God oh my God—What did I just do?!_

She shouldn't have been making such stupid decisions. Not around a stranger. This guy didn’t like humans, he didn't like this situation, he didn't like ANY of this! And the snarl which followed her—instead of a plasma ball—clearly had more to do with the wrench in her pocket than whether Bumblebee might recognize her toasted carcass!

Charlie had to be quick, and had to ignore the sounds of a fight in a distance; considerably closer to her were the rustles of metal and plastic, and she wagered Grumpbot was trying to crawl his way to the front of the awning. If she was doing one single thing wrong by the time he regained sight of her, she was probably going to die.

She popped the trunk and pulled out the toolbox, leaving behind paper boxes stuffed with spare parts, overalls, and her mechanic's creeper. One thing at a time.

"I've got them!" she shouted to him, but then got confused about that 'one thing at a time' bit and added, "I also brought my welder." It wasn't the most reliable of things, as she'd restored it from Hank's trash bin, but at least it was a good old transformer box, har har, and not one of the newfangled inverters that had the old hats cussing like sailors. "Is that useful, or do we even have electricity right—"

"Get - back - here - now!" he snarled. The wetness of his voice reminded her he was leaking fluids.

Charlie closed the trunk and hurried back under the awning. "I'm coming! I'm coming, don't freak out, I'm still just one person!"

A hand slammed down around where she entered, just missed hitting her, and landed so she was positioned at the crook between thumb and forefinger. The facial expression hanging above her was better illuminated than ever before, and it was _livid._ Charlie popped open the tool box as a peace offering, and held it up and open for him to see. She felt like the wise man in a nativity scene, presenting frankincense.

"I have metric and SAE Ratchet heads, and extension bars," she said quickly, "Wire cutters, a screwdriver with interchangeable heads, pliers, magnets—"

_Aha_. There was a widening flare to those angular blue eyes, a flare she dared call "interest." He focused on the toolbox instead of on her. Oh, _yup,_ Charlie had to hide a smile: That there was the wholly recognizable expression of a _professional,_ like you'd see on a tradesman, an artist, a _chef_—on an old rerun of Julia Child!—only this chef had previously been allotted nothing but a skillet and paring knife and now might as well have just been handed every pan, pot, and cleaver that had ever come out of a Sears showroom.

Charlie knew how that felt: That was _always_ how new tools felt. Every time. Smug, she prompted, "Do you know what year and model vehicle you're presently wearing?"

His attention snapped back to her. "I do not need your help." A droplet of dark fluid slid down his chin, to join the streaks there. They glinted purplish in the dim lighting, those streaks.

"Okay, but," she argued, "can I help make things go faster?"

"What would be faster would be you not distracting me!" He hissed, lifting and slamming that hand back into the ground near her for emphasis. But this time? This time Charlie wasn't scared of him. 

"I've already distracted you for twenty minutes," she argued, because the longer this went on the more she felt strangely comfortable with his brand of asshole. It was almost something she'd seen before: In crotchety old garage hands who just wanted a moment of quite and some goddamn respect. "Can I somehow help you make those twenty minutes back up?"

Blue eyes narrowed distrustfully. His face—it was so smooth and human compared to Bee's. 

A few seconds later, Grumbot wordlessly slipped backwards off his hands and onto his one working knee. His silhouette was barely visible. His glowing eyes towered above her—as tall as Bumblebee without even _standing._ Charlie raised her brows, smiled as charmingly as she knew how, and shrugged a little. 

Apparently he'd made a decision about how dangerous he was, or else he was just too tired for this shit, because he turned his head away and sank back towards the rear wall. Charlie followed him back to his seated position, and winced at the creaking and groans of badly oiled metal. He shouldn't have been dragging himself around in this condition. That one was on her, and Charlie felt bad. She sat her tools down, and unfolded the different cantilevered trays.

Should she take out key tools so he didn't have to struggle pinching out the ones he wanted? Maybe, maybe not; He seemed to be navigating human-sized tools easy enough, despite them looking like small, dainty, precision instruments in his hands. 

Blue eyes were watching her from above. "You do nothing," he said, breaking the silence, "except as I instruct, and you do _not_ leave this area again. Are we _clear _this time?"

Charlie bobbed her head. She took his original wrench back out of her pocket and offered it up to him.

He took it so brusquely that he shoved her a little with the side of his hand, maybe to establish he was in charge here. She winced only because she already had bruises from earlier in this encounter.

Grumpbot huffed (through all his vents simultaneously) and then waved her attention back to his bad leg. "There is a bolt up underneath," he specified, tapping on a single panel with those massive fingers.

"Sure thing. Are we working in the dark for a reason?"

The second the words left her mouth, Charlie wondered if maybe they _were__._ What if the light attracted whatever enemies Bee and the others had gone off to deal with? But Grumpbot made another annoyed mouth-sound and brought on his parking lights at a dull glow, maybe because they were being sneaky, or maybe just so as not to blind her. 

His armor was white. White and red? It was streaked with different colored fluids and gels, from black tar to motor oil to speckles of green and a whole lot of purple. They stood out like a muddy artist's palette against such a conveniently clean background color. Charlie scampered to work on the task he'd given her, and noticed in the process that her own hands were of course wet with purple from where she'd been helping him eariler. Well, no sense worrying about that now. She'd wear gloves if she ever had to do this again; right now she'd just accept the stains and hope none of these substances caused cancer...

The plate he'd pointed to was surrounded by what looked like familiar hardware, like brake lines for instance, but which were all in unusual places performing unknown functions. Apparently fixing this was a higher priority than whatever had him spitting up blood? Maybe that made sense. He couldn't tourniquet his leg off the way humans could, and it was riddled with holes, all of which he could be losing 'blood' through. She wedged her fingers in under the plate.

Okay. She felt the bolt he was talking about. While attempting to look as competent as possible, since she'd got this 'internship' by critiquing Grumpbot's wrenches, she estimated the bolt size, picked her chosen wrench from her toolbox, and slid it in between the not-exactly-brake-lines and different glosses of metal. She caught the bolt on the first try, and wiggled it free about fifteen degrees at a time. She felt she was being extremely inefficient, but the robot supervising her efforts was already working on another part of himself, and didn't complain.

Kay! Charlie got the bolt free, and he turned his attention back to her, prised the plate off with his fingers, and exposed wide swaths of purple and a thick, tarry black ooze that gummed up everything.

This whole bad leg was a disaster. She wondered if he could have just shut off 'power' to it, or somehow closed a valve to cut off any further loss of fluid. Maybe he'd needed what was left of it far too much to give up on? This said something about how harsh this war must have been on all of them.

What did Bee look like right now? Was he wounded? Ugh. At least nothing here was actively _spurting._ Maybe this ooze was all the equivalent of a clot or scab.

Grumpbot produced a small torch and leaned over to direct it into the wound. He wiped tarry ooze out of the way. "Get your wire cutters and wait for my next instruction."

Charlie obeyed and looked up at him while she waited, noticing cracks and missing portions of his chest armor and streaks of what looked like radiator and transmission fluid, maybe even antifreeze.

Something about the red and white outfit struck her, then, and her stare jumped straight to his shoulder.

There, stamped across his armor like a tattoo, was the Red Cross symbol.

Charlie's brain flew back, back, back, to the Enquirer magazine sitting on the stand, with WAR CRIME in its title, and the interrelated news broadcasts that another 'robot terror' had been brought down by good men and women...

...and to memories of Bee being dragged away from her by soldiers...

They'd - _lied. _

"Why are you leaking ocular discharge?" the Autobot medic demanded; and now it was clear why he was the one repairing himself: He was the only one with the knowledge of how to do it. He was the one from the magazine, the news papers, the television. The medic. Only he was _still alive, _and the 'soldiers' hunting him had _lied _about _everything._

Charlie recognized the wet heat of stress tears on her face. She wanted to wipe them but couldn't because of her hands. Since that was often the case on the job, she had long ago cultivated the habit of turning her cheek into her shoulder if she needed to scratch her nose or rub a bit of dirt out of her eye. She did that now. 

"Hnh." The Autobot medic directed her to reach in, pinch, twist shut, and cut short some very small not-brake-lines. Charlie obeyed silently, because he'd been in this condition for an entire week now. He didn't need her sass on top of everything else.

_You are the random slap in the face that finally shocked me off my ass, _she wanted to tell him._ Your death, at our hands, human hands, hands I didn't fight or stand against, or care to know about, or do anything to stop._

"Half inch wrench, with extension bar," he instructed without looking up, working with one hand and opening the other palm up to her. Charlie fitted the tool for him and passed it over. 

_I got in my car and drove. I didn't stop for anything but supplies. I've been looking for Bumblebee ever since._

"Flathead screwdriver." 

_Only you aren't dead, and he's not dead, which somehow means I'm not too late. I didn't turn off the cruise control too late, I didn't wake up too late, I didn't stop doing the normal things I never even cared about too late; I can help, this is proof I can help._

"Five-sixteenths-inch pin punch."

Her 'ocular discharge' was way too confusing to try and explain. Instead Charlie just worked as quickly and efficiently as possible to help the Autobot medic with whatever task he directed her to. He didn't complement or thank her, and she didn't need it. She was the late one. This was all on her.

"Do you have a name?" she asked, subdued, as she again was called upon to get into some very cramped spaces with wire cutters.

"Hnh. Ratchet."

She reached for the toolbox again. "What size?"

"No. My designation is 'Ratchet.' My name."

"Oh." Charlie decided not to tell him his Native American name should have been 'Throws Wrenches.' He probably wouldn't have gotten the reference, and it ruined a joke if you had to explain it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Ratchet. I'd say you look like shit, but, after thinking you were dead for seven chapters, I have to say that you've never looked so handsome.


	8. Point of View Swap!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think we are going with black. Yeah. Definitely black.

Cybertronians had a faulty sense for how long it took inert metal to rust.

They'd never spent much time on an organic planet before, where the soil held on to water because of all the humus and microbes in it, and the humidity was in the double digits. They'd of course seen plenty of rain in their lives, of all kinds of chemical compositions, water included. They'd seen underground oceans and murky slag pools. But when Ratchet told them this scrap yard had most likely been abandoned less than a decivorn, it was another random little thing that reminded them they weren't home.

Reminded them the way they thought of _time_ had to change.

A decivorn, by their standards was nothing. Back in the day, you'd spend that long just flying economy out to a colony to stay with the relatives a spell. But humans did time differently, _impatiently_, and in human time 'eight years' meant this place was finished and nobody was coming back for it.

With that frame of reference in mind, the glow coming out of the scrap yard boded nothing but bad news.

Best case scenario: This was some dumbaft Decepticons who'd been away from the main fight, heard their brothers-in-arms getting their tilepipes handed to them, and circled around to try and ambush the Autobots in their own base where their guards might be lowered. Only instead of being _smart_ about it, the boltheads had their lamps on. Maybe Ratchet had thrown a stone or something to put them on edge so they'd give themselves away? If that was the case, Ironhide was gonna lecture his aurals off.

Worst case scenario: The slag-damned Cemetery Wind was here to finish the job, with their victim, Ratchet, right there in the middle of the place, too big to hide from 'em forever, and way too vulnerable to win a fight.

Ratchet hadn't broken the lieutenant's interdiction on remote communications to reach out to them, but all that told them was that he was most likely alive and had either taken out the invaders himself or else was laying low and banking on a prayer everyone got back to him soon.

They didn't comm him over the airways, not even to say they were on their way, because they might need the element of surprise. 'Cause while nobody else had the right keys to decode their messages—every squad maintained its own encryption key, especially now with factions blurring and everyone running cold or in hiding—any transmission _at all_ might alert some enemy they were on their way home.

And while humans didn't have the right technology to pick up Cybertronian shortwave transmissions, period, that didn't make it one hundred percent safe to talk over their heads. Sometimes they dug out transponders from a corpse that would still light up whenever messages were flying. If that was the case, all it'd take is one transmission, whether for Ratchet to call out or first the rest of them to ask him questions, and the humans would call in an airstrike to flush them all out.

Nhh.

Cybertronian soldiers scavenged from one another, sure, but that was the time they lived in and it was mostly for life-saving transplants or much needed weapons upgrades; Ironhide was hauling a corpse in her cargo bed right now, and only feeling mildly bad she'd killed one of the fraggers in driving them off. But that was _natural _for them, and had nothing whatsoever to do with 'technology.' The constant interchanging of parts, the passing of tools from one to another to another; Cybertronians adapted, constantly.

Thinking about tiny, hairy, minicon-sized organics carrying off your chopped off parts, holding up one of your internal organs in its meaty hand like it was some insentient peripheral or gory talisman, and not an intimate part of any mech's natural communications system—whole thing was morbid as rust. Only blessing to was the transponders couldn't be refueled without a living body, and only lasted a lunar cycle.

(Ratchet.)

(Ratchet was there _alone._)

(Ratchet, who was barely holding it together as he was; too weak to fight, too weak to be left on his own. They'd had to make a choice that left the smallest possible chance of losing anybody else. Scrap. Slag. Damn. Bee had made the right call, but _still_.)

Ironhide slowed to dump the Decepticon body quietly at the perimeter.

[Ironhide,] With a bit of help from the spybots, Bumbleebee had perfected extremely short-range waveforms, binary words that died more than ten meters apart. He'd had to, what with the voice gone. Giving orders with his radio had been a communications nightmare. [Take the point.]

They reconfigured their marching order in response, rolling down the gravel lane, Mirage covering their afts, Bee on the left, Jazz the right.

Huh.

This... this was looking less and less like humans. 

Humans would have shown up as a bunch of independently moving flashlights and muffled commotion, maybe a few floodlights; or, if they were trying to be sneaky sons-of-Unicron and rely on night vision goggles, they'd at least have little rangefinder lights for shooting in the dark. What was the infrared on this? Whole bunch of little bodies?

[Jazz?] Bee prompted: [What is the heat map?]

"Not pickin' up much of anythin, mah mech," Jazz whispered in return. "There's no stream of exhaust. Lights look to be just one set of headlamps. Based on the spectrum wavelength, Ah'd be super surprised if they were non-native."

Okay, so this was likely humans. But 'one' did not 'a caravan of soldiers' make.

[Spread out. Move in silently.]

They surrounded the scene. They let themselves coast the last few hectometers, running quietly and transforming when the forward momentum petered out. They crept aggressively in towards the center, looking for signs of traps, explosives, other Cybertronians, or cameras. 

Nothing? The hell? Had some flesh bag teens dared each other to creep around an old scrap yard at night, and driven all the way up to this place for kicks? Left their car running in the middle for no particular reason? That'd be just their luck.

Still with weapons raised, on their guard, and body posture held low to keep themselves well-camouflaged against the scrap, the four of them gathered slowly around the center of the yard. They got a gander at the source of the light: An outdated human car with a fresh coat of wax and lights pointed right in Ratchet's front door. That could have been a coincidence. Or, it could have meant they were about to walk right in to the sight of their friend's offline body with bombs strapped to his chest.

"This making sense to any of you?" Ironhide growled.

Far over on her three, Jazz shrugged. Mirage jerked his chin at something, and Ironhide looked and caught sight of their Lieutenant: Bumblebee looked kinda like his processors had fallen out of his head. His blaster had drooped uselessly downward and his optics were locked on the foreign car.

"Bee," Ironhide hissed to wake him up.

Bumblebee startled back to reality, glanced their way, but then left the shelter of the scrap and walked bold straight across the middle of the yard to reach the car. He stopped beside it and looked it over from nose to tail light, almost like he recognized the thing and was trying to put together the mystery of _why._

Ho boy, _stars and ancestors_, these youngins were gonna get her killed one day. Ironhide kept alert to make sure Bee wasn't jumped. Mirage visibly did likewise. Jazz, sod him, crept out beside their Lieutenant to see if he could help.

Then Bee's war mask lifted and his gun and blade spun away into servos. He twisted about to stare into the awning and played a very quiet, dramatic, "Oh _no_," over the radio.

'Oh no?' The volcanic pits was this? Bee looked grim. _Scared_. And a second later, he sprinted for the awning like somebody's life depended on it.

Ironhide straightened up in alarm. "Bumblebee!"

"Ratchet!" Bee shouted in Ironhide's voice, 'n spliced it to the radio: "Where is she!? (Zzvvt)—What happened?!—(ssshh)—Did you—_offline_—her!?"

"Whoa that's a lot of noise, Lieutenant!" fast-thinking Jazz was already at his side, catching Bee's shoulder, trying to intercept stupidity. "What's gotten-?"

Bumblebee threw his hand off and shoved him out of the way with his hip, eyes wide. "Charlie!!!" he wailed in some shrill human voice, and then muscled his way in under the awning, arms out to catch either wall of leaning appliances.

Ironhide's armor prickled, her body reflexively waiting for a _boom_—out of cynicism, out of habit, even if the context told her that this wasn't what they'd come home to; even if she could almost feel Ratchet's wide open EMF from here, and ought to be able to rationally tell he was online and not even making a serious effort to hide.

"'Charlie?'" Jazz scrambled after Bee, as confused as anybody. "Is that a name, or are you going to do that thing where you try to spell human words again Bravo-Echo-Echo?"

"Charlie!!! Charlie! Charlie-_Charlie_. CHARLIE!"

Bumblebee might not have had his own voice or inflections, but the 'bots chasing him didn't need them; his EMF was going nuts, completely unfiltered; they could feel his terror and excitement in their mesh, tickling their sensors. The only reason to use so many different voices—the only reason to have the same name recorded in so many different human voices even just to begin with—was if he was getting excited over one organic in specific.

"Great," Mirage muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can anyone dispute Ironhide with a female pronoun but the exact same physical shape, hardiness, refusal to die, and preferably a bass voice is equally if not more valid than Ironhide with a male pronoun? Nope. Nope they cannot. And if they try, she's going to sit her massive Ford ass on them and crush them into jelly. Squish.
> 
> I was always going to rewrite some genders to attempt a 50:50 Cybertronian gender ratio (because why not?), but the decision to change Ironhide in particular—without altering any of her other physical attributes so she continued to read as masculine to humans—pleased me the mostest. 
> 
> Scáthach, the ancient female Celtic Trainer of Warriors, inspired me because of Ironhide's role in some continuities in 'raising' Optimus into a warrior, and a similar role training all the other newbies. She has no kids, just all her students who make their warmother proud <3
> 
> https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/woman-behind-man-celtic-warrior-scathach-teacher-warriors-006309


	9. Clavismechanicaphobia?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What on earth is with that title? Oh well, I’m sure I'll be able to figure it out eventually.

When Ratchet turned his head to glare at the walls of scrap, Charlie didn't think much of it, figuring he'd heard something like a rat or dog or who knew what else and was listening to make sure it wasn't more important.

Random noises probably helped distract him from the human arm she'd sunk elbow-deep into his chassis, feeling blindly about for automotive parts. She didn't blame him for being tense. It was obvious 'deep in his chassis' wasn't a place Ratchet much liked her, and she sympathized. But he'd told her what to do, and she was working on it, and it was just her luck that everything was cramped, a little alien, and stuck together with tar.

"Okay," she muttered firstly to herself and also to him, as an apology for the wait. "There it is—"

"—Ratchet!" the word exploded from so close it nearly scared her off her feet. The voice it had been uttered in was a low deep base that it felt like it shook the ground.

Oh _crap_ she was presently busy helping someone who would never admit to genuinely needing it, and She could not turn around to explain herself.

"Where is she!? Zzvvt—What happened?!—shsshhh—Did you—_offline_—her!?

Those buzzes...

Bee?

She heard a commotion or scuffle outside, followed by a terrifyingly out of place sound: The sound of her own mother, Sally, screaming her name: "CHARLIE!!!"

That couldn't be _anyone _but Bumblebee out there. 

Charlie heard heavy footsteps coming inward and some kind of arguing, but here she was: Stuck facing in the opposite direction, unable to see him, cheek almost flush with Ratchet's chest plate, tugging and fighting with gears that had been glued into place by alien clot goo. Ratchet hadn't said anything yet, so Charlie didn't either. Focus, Charlie.

"Charlie!!! Charlie. Charlie-_charlie_. CHARLIE!"

The only person who could possibly have so many recordings of Charlie's own family members saying her name was Bumblebee. The ONLY person!

Frustrated, she growled, "C'mon you stupid thing, if I can just—" SNAP. "Got it!" Relief and excitement rushed over her, now for two reasons. She got her other elbow up firmly on Ratchet's chest plate for leverage, and pulled her arm free, joint by joint. She was slicked black from fingertip to bicep with motor oil and mildly uncomfortable purple fluid that kept her arm hair standing on end, leaving her in a perpetual state of goosebumps. Yet clasped in her hand was that broken transmission she'd been after. "That's it! I got it, it just—"

She heard a high-pitch power-up noise behind her, a sound which she now fully came to associate with Cybertronian plasma shooters, and someone shouted: "Sweet mother of mercy, is she takin' him apart!?"

AH.

But protection came from an unexpected source: As Charlie whipped around to raise her hands and plead her innocence, a massive white and red forearm got right in her way, squeezing her in place.

"Are there TROJANS in your NEURAL NETWORK!?" Ratchet bellowed. "Don't you SHOOT anything right on top of me! Do you realize how little mass and stopping power human bodies have!? Put that down, you glitchheaded oaf! My plating is as weak as—!" he used what Charlie was now sure was a word from the Cybertronian language, which seemed to require the ability to make a chord of sounds, all the individual tines of which were slipping and sliding against one another. No translation was needed; She had a feeling this word was analogous to 'tissue paper.' "The bolt would go right through her! I swear, the last thing I need from you—"

"CHARLIE!!!" a crackling recording of her mom's voice screamed at her once again, and then there were big yellow arms invading the protective hug of white and red plating, and graphite colored fingertips had reached her face and shoulder. She got her hand on a fingertip that then curled into the touch of her, and for a second she wondered if Bumblebee was going to climb straight over his own injured teammate to get to her.

"—Get OFF of me!" Ratchet was not having a good day, and everyone in this room was making it worse. He shoved at Bee, and although Charlie could plainly see the force behind that shove was weak, as neither of Bee's arms actually moved, Bee did shy backwards. Seconds later, later Ratchet was uncurling from his defensive position and picking her up. He wasn't callous or rough about it this time, holding her out a little like a Barbie doll—upright and with support under the armpits.

And that was the manner in which, _finally_, for the first time in three years...

... Charlie really did finally get to see her best friend again.

* * *

Charlie reached out, instantly, like she was touch-starved. Like she hadn't been near or interacted with another human being in three years. Blue eyes widened immediately in response to her.

She forgot she was bruised, unshowered, and covered in Cybertronian bodily fluids, but, anyway, Bee didn't care. His palms came up under her legs to give her a place to sit, and then slate fingertips curled in around her back to replace white ones. He took her with the easy gentleness she'd come to expect from him, and brought her up to his chest level to see her better.

Charlie was less gentle. She rocked forward on his hands, lunged forward, scrambled for purchase on his chassis, and stuffed both arms around his neck and glue herself there, her cheek against the fuel lines and rubberized coating of his throat.

Her ability to speak just bailed on her, completely. No words came out. Technically, she wasn't entirely sure she'd even seen him, or his condition, or how 'alright' he was. Her brain had just gone 'yup, that's Bee' and swiftly followed that observation with 'hug. now.'

"Charlie," Bee said very quietly, in the voice she'd used on the day they'd 'met.' "Charlie Watson." His chin was on her shoulder, and his hands were closed around her back; his fingers rising and falling with every big breath she dragged in. He might even have been twisting subtly back and forward as if to rock her. He oozed contentment, or at least that's what it felt like to her.

She was sniffling before she was crying, and crying long before she could talk. She was a mess. She felt like someone at the final stages of grief, after the funeral; a person all alone inside their house, listening to the rain at six in the morning, halfway through pouring coffee, when everything inside suddenly collapsed and fell out and all was left were sobs, hard and long and broken.

Bee wasn't dead, though. He was right here. Physical. Real. Very much alive. And happy to see her?

"Ya know, I thought we learned our lesson the first, what... two, three, twenty, hundred times?" muttered a voice from nearby that sounded strangely like it might have a Newyorker or maybe even Italian accent. "Lieutenant. Ey, _Bumblebee_."

She felt Bee lift his head but his chin stayed hovering over top of her, maybe because he was looking back across his shoulder.

"Lemme be the bearer of 'bad news,'" the speaker continued: "This isn't the time for yet another cute adoption program, Lieutenant. In any pervious era of this fight, a human would be a liability. Now it's presence is a sign we've been found out. Or have you forgotten we're in hiding? Where there's one, there's always more."

"I came alone," Charlie disagreed, breathing in and out, deep and hard.

"Even if we take ya at your word, human, and ya believe yourself to be telling the truth, you wouldn't be the first young fool to lead them straight to us."

Bee whirred loud and angry; Charlie could guess who the 'first young fool' must have been and opened her eyes, catching sight of a blue and white robot with black claws jutting forward from his wrist guards. "I'm a mechanic," She disputed. "I know every inch of my car, so if you think there must be some kind of tracking device on it, you're wrong."

"No, based on how long the lot of you took," Ratchet grumbled and snarled, already back to work down there where she,d left him, "the entire national guard could have absconded with me by now were it the case."

Bumblebee peeked over Charlie at Ratchet and then leaned back to look down at her again, blue eyes widening like he was trying to figure out how she'd survived whatever length of time she'd just spent in the company of someone so unplesant. He saw the broken transmission she hadn't let go of, blinked at it, and Charlie blinked at it, too. Oh yeah.

"A-aw, Bee, c'mon, yuck..." another robot gushed unexpectedly. "That's so gross, yo, Bee, you gonna need a car wash..."

It occurred to Charlie that she was presently drenched in their blood, holding aloft the rough equivalent of an internal organ in one hand. Did she presently look like the equivalent of a horror movie butcher or evil doctor? Bee had been 'scared' of her once just because she'd been holding a wrench, with his eyes focused on it like she might as well have been holding a big old scary needle. Oh dear. "Um," Charlie mumbled, and then pushed back from Bee's shoulder and twisted around, leaning over her friend's fingertips to offer the transmission back to Ratchet.

Ratchet took it.

"You should probably just find a replacement," she put in, "if you can. It's what most mechanics do. Rebuilding a bad transmission's not exactly cost effective..."

Ratchet gave her a look.

Charlie decided this was a 'tiny ant, do not undermine my medical authority by giving me advice on your earth technology in front of these impressionable fools' look.

Seeing it, she fumbled out a, "You know what, you know best," to assuage him.

"Bbwwwuuuuwwee?" Bee asked, and Charlie turned back to him and most probably got teary-eyed all over again. Apparently she was going to tear up every time she turned away for a second and caught sight of his face again. She touched that face, forgetting, again, that she was disgusting. She left behind a streak, scowled, and quickly tried to wipe it all off against her jeans.

"Sorry, Bee, I was just—"

"Cckkcvvvvwww?"

"—I was looking for you!" she finally exclaimed. "The Enquirer ran a story about someone attacking Autobots instead of just Decepticons and... I... just..." She pantomimed her head exploding. "I don't know! I don't know, okay? I'm just here."

He _smiled _at her, from the shape of his eyes to the lift of his mouth plate to the way his antenna flopped contentedly to half mast. 

"Back up," a low voice interrupted. "How did you find this place?"

"Bee gave me some kind of tracking device a long time ago," Charlie explained, rubbing her face and trying to focus on the unfamiliar robots in the room. 

"You what!?" growled the blue raptor guy with the black claws on his wrists, but his attention was on Bee, not her. "You little _idiot_, you gave out a device like that willingly-?"

"It was before anything happened," Charlie defended, "before you guys even landed here, when he was just the—the scout, right?" She checked Bee's face and he firmly bobbed his head.

"Hold on now, something about this story's not adding up," Low Voice interjected. "Bee, you debriefed Optimus and I was there; you told us about Sector Seven and the burn they'd gotten from the Decepticons. They had to have been keeping an optic on this girl; they'd have raided her hab for any scrap you'd left behind."

"I kept it safe!" Charlie protested, but then reconsidered. "Well, Bee actually picked a good hiding place is a more accurate way of putting it. And at that point, at the start, they weren't against you, right? Or is... everything the news told us wrong..."

Bee made a mournful sound but then buzzed and shook his head. It wasn't 'all' wrong. There had been teamwork, and there had been changes in command, and there had been some kind of betrayal. It was all there like an open book on sadly tilted blue eyes. It made sense now, why all these other Autobots were leery of even a 'human friend.'

Ratchet paused in tightening a nut and spoke up: "You have this tracker on you now? I didn't scan anything."

"I-I put it outside in one of the microwaves," she said. "I didn't want to be holding on to it if I was walking into some kind of a trap set for you guys. God, that'd be a horribly ironic end, right? Here, I'll go get it right now," she pushed against Bee's hands and he reluctantly murmured and leaned over to set her on her feet.

As she left, she imagined Ratchet raising an eyebrow because what he said was, "She's smarter than any of you hot shots."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day, in the future, the Bay Movie movies really are going to exist in this universe, and everyone's going to have commentary on them...
> 
> "Does black really make me look that fat? Because I think I like it." —Ironhide
> 
> "Where the hell is Sunstreaker and why am in Sideswipe's colors?" —Mirage 
> 
> "They had me jump right at Megatron! Do I look stupid to you!? No sir, no way, I didn't even get to play up group morale or crack jokes or nothin! Man you mean they ain't even gonna try and put my dumbass body back together!? No, just carrying me around like a broken playskool toy, SMH...!" —Jazz
> 
> "WHY DO NONE OF US HAVE ANY COLORS!?" — Starscream, appalled on behalf of all the Decepticons, probably while stuck in disguise on display anchored to a roof in in aeronautics museum somewhere, bored out of his mind. Don't ask who wheeled a television in there for him.


	10. Group Morale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'll give Bay one thing. While Mirage/Dino's design is wrong in every single way, it's at least gorgeous. I guess we just imagine that in blue and white now and we're good. Also not a Ferrari.

Charlie walked briskly and eyeballed the line of microwaves. It was dark, but she found the 'cassette tape,' and recovered it.

She could hear the Autobots talking in muffled voices. It sounded like a low-key argument, but it mustn't have directly involved Bee; because when she looked up, she saw him leaning tentatively out of the awning, hands splayed on the towers of appliances to peek at her. He looked like he still couldn't believe she was really here, or maybe like he was worried she'd mysteriously vanish.

A smirk tugged her cheek. She felt better somehow. She tucked the cassette into her pocket, and then hurried over to her car to turn off her lights and save her car battery. Then she popped the trunk and then leaned there, a hand on either side, trying to decide what Ratchet might need. Charlie wasn't one hundred percent clear on the relationship between basic automotive care and alien apparatus fixing, but her supplies couldn't 'hurt' right?

Glancing up, Charlie saw her yellow robot had crept a few more steps out from his awning and was craning dramatically to the side to keep an eye on her 'round the side of her trunk. He startled a breath out of her, a laugh. "Hey Bee," she rasped. "What's up?"

He shrank an inch in place, antenna laying down. Then, with a shy little glance behind himself, he tiptoed dramatically out beside her. Apparently someone was hoping every other robot in this adventuring party would forget he was missing for a few seconds longer.

She was really grinning now, especially when he crouched down beside her and ruffled her hair into a mess. Charlie had spent so much time sitting on the idea that, for one reason or another, there was no reason for any giant alien robots to want to see her: She wasn't needed.

She'd been wrong.

Standing beside him, smiling wide; Charlie felt all three years fall away again, and she was back in the only summer of her life worth building on. She lifted her hand up along his forearm, and briefly tucked her fingers into a lip of his plating, just to touch him, just to stand there with him, as friends, both on the same sweet silly mysterious mute wavelength of excitement.

Big rubber and metal fingertips cupped her hair and splayed over her vertebrae and shoulder blades. "Charlie," he whispered in her voice again, and then made some inquisitive, computery coos.

"Miss me?" she asked.

He gave a very low, deep coo to say yes, yes he _had_, and she felt like she was walking on sunshine. 

"What's, um, what's everyone's names?" she asked. "I still get to call you Bumblebee, right?"

"Ratchet," Bee said in one of the other's bot's voices, and then continued to use it, "Jazz, Ironhide, Bumblebee..." He waffled over the last one and then said in a different (and somewhat mischievous) voice, _"Dino."_ Charlie would have asked which names belong to which bot, but one of them called out:

"Hey Bee, where'd ya go, mech!"

Charlie cleared her throat and yelled, "We're coming!" Then she elbowed Bee, gently (so as not to hurt her funny bone), and reached into the trunk. "Can you help me carry some of this?" she asked, hauling out the big welder box.

He bleeped and blooped curiously, crouching to peek into her trunk before reaching forward to help her.

"It's parts," she explained as she tugged our a big cardboard box. "See? I didn't know if you'd need anything, so I just sort of grabbed a big sample. Though, I was picturing a muscle car, not whatever Ratchet's outfit is."

His eyes widened expressively, and he gathered up most of the boxes and the welder. Charlie grabbed up the overflow, and together they quickly brought the contents of her trunk along into the alcove where the others were gathered. Most everyone had their headlights on, proof that just because they were aliens it didn't mean they could see in the dark. 

"What's all that?" asked the Blue and White Velociraptor Bot who may have very appropriately been named 'Dino.'

Bee shouldered his way in between Charlie and Dino. Ratchet glanced up at them and his lips pressed in a wide, unamused line that probably meant he wanted that welder but _how dare they_ do something helpful for him and threaten his perpetual glower.

"No idea if any of these are useful," Charlie said as she pulled out a handful of screws and nuts suitable to most Fords, and shrugged, "but they weren't doing anyone any good sitting in my garage."

Ratchet did not thank her. He also did not rebuff her. The way he looked pointedly from her to his makeshift table probably meant she was allowed to set the supplies down there and he'd take a look and decide good from bad. Bee followed her to set down the welder, only to pick up the power cord, peer at it, and then pick the whole thing up again to go looking for a power outlet that could handle it.

"...Gonna go get the scrap we brought in," Mr. Low Voice Robot ('Ironhide?') finally muttered, breaking the awkward quiet behind them. He turned around and headed out of the Alcove, and nudged Dino's shoulder on the way out like he expected him to follow.

That left Charlie with Bee, Ratchet, and... the robot who'd gotten sick at the sight of her blood slicked hands. Charlie glanced back to see if that guy had any other remarkable attributes. He was short, shorter than Bee. He either had a silvered visor lowered over his eyes, or else he simply didn't have normal eyes. Were both possibilities equally valid? Like Ratchet, Visor Boy did appear to have a mostly silicone or rubber face, which was to say it was soft and pliable and had lips and nose.

"Uh," Visor Boy (Jazz?) hesitated. "Hi?"

Charlie waved. With her hands still bloodied.

Visor Boy made a spectacular grimace and even flinched backwards... like a chick who'd seen a mouse in a Loony Toons episode.

Charlie might have apologized, or tried, but Bee whistled a yoohoo to her, and called her over to see what he'd found. It was a water spicket instead of an outlet. Charlie raised a brow at him before seeing how carefully he was carefully touching and nudging the rusted valve. Oh? Oh! He managed to get it open. The pipes rattled and a thick copper sludge came out, but then water started flowing fresh and clean.

Charlie got her hands gratefully in there, shuddering at how cold it was and then rubbing at her arms to get everything off. She knew the oil was going to leave stains for days, but the purple stuff washed quickly away. Some vigorous scrubbing got most of the oil off. Once the water was running clear off her fingers, she wiped at her face to make sure it was clean, too.

"Bzzzvvvuu—Eee?" She felt Bee looming over. He set down the welder (oh boy Bee, not next to the water—!) and touched at her hair. She thought he was going to ruffle it again, but he picked up some between his thumb and forefinger.

Hmm. She hadn't showered in days but, now that she thought about it, her hair felt... sticky.Charlie stilled. She remembered she'd gotten herself a little banged up earlier in the evening. Her excitement over helping out Ratchet had made it easy to completely ignore her aches and pains.

The reason for her sticky hair dawned on her simultaneously with the almost imperceptible shift of blue tones to red in the light reflected off the tumbling water:

There was blood in her hair from when Ratchet had beamed her with the wrench.

Charlie spun around to find Bumblebee's warmask sliding into place; his eyes had narrowed to crimson dots. He pivoted towards Ratchet with a shriek of dissonant, broken sounds, like if a person scrubbed radio stations too fast. Charlie lunged for his elbow, because the last time she'd seen Bee do this, he hadn't been himself. She heard motors revving up and air vents opening, and then a blade jutted out from his wristguard. The only reason he didn't move was probably because he'd have dragged a helpless human along after him, and possibly trampled her in the process.

"Bumblebee!" she shouted.

"Vvvvvvvwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

Ratchet recoiled in place, open hands lifted defensively, his expression muddled up but not quite afraid.

"Whoa hold up hold up!" 'Jazz' exploded, darting in between the two of them. "Bee! Lieutenant!"

Bee buzzed violently, loud and angry, a dozen sounds all at once.

"What are you doing!?" Jazz exclaimed, while gesturing in confusion at Bee's drawn weapons. "Why-why are you attacking—!? Uh. R-ratchet. Ratch, my mech, why's his spark venting the wrong color? Is he-?"

"He's fine. It's a phenotypical alteration based on strong EMF changes. I haven't seen it since I was giving checkups for young sparks during the Great Exodus; usually fades with age."

There was an insult in there somewhere but Charlie didn't have time for it, bellowing: "Bumblebee! I - am - okay! Look at me! Do I look like I'm dying to you!?"

"Nhhhha!" Bee glared pointedly at her, eyes still completely different, both narrow and bright red. His whole body posture was stiff and vibrating with anger.

"Ratchet was scared, Bee!" Charlie shouted. "And why shouldn't have he been scared; he was alone here!" Today had been filled with major life changing events, a number of which had involved Ratchet. The last thing Bee was allowed to do was stab him over something so stupid as a rough first meeting. "He didn't have you for backup; what was he supposed to do?!"

"ReeEEEEEE!" Bee hissed back Ratchet's way. Ratchet cocked his head and looked ready to answer this very logically.

Instead, "Hey!" Charlie ducked under Bumblebee's shoulder to get in front of him, shoving at his waist because she couldn't quite reach his chest plate. "You! I'm talking to you, Bee! Look at me! He's never seen me before! You're not exactly telling stories to people, so aren't you glad he believed me at all!?"

Bee vented angrier and angrier, louder and louder, until finally he heard her last words, and then a tremendous little shudder seemed to rock him. His trembling 'wings' oozed off to stillness, and the armor of his shoulders sunk an inch in place.

"Bumblebee," Ratchet intoned, "I didn't— No. I threatened her—_unsuccessfully_, I might add." Charlie glanced back his way and realized Ratchet appeared to be replying to something; suggesting Bee could still communicate in some fashion _she_ couldn't hear. "I did not _intentionally _cause her damage. And I believe I am correct in saying her injuries are temporary?"

"Yeah!" Charlie was sure, because she hadn't swooned or anything and mostly just felt a little bruised. "I'm fine. Bumblebee? I'm fine."

Bee looked back down at her and stared at her for a bit, still 'breathing' very heavily, still with red eyes; still some kind of war machine all revved up and angry and wanting to take his anger out on something. It occurred to Charlie she didn't know what he'd been through recently. Heck, he'd just been through a fight like thirty minutes ago. Did _he_ have any injuries from that? Any pain?

Maybe everyone here was on their last nerve, consequences be damned.

"Bumblebee...?" she called up to him, worried. "You still there?"

The yellow war mask retracted back up into his helm, the wrist blade sang back into hiding, and the narrowed red eyes widened and blued again, fading from angry to almost guilty or regretful. His body language turned subtly inward, as if _ashamed_. If everyone was stressed it made sense why Bee was sliding from one extreme to the other.

Maybe she was stressed, too.

"You're okay," she murmured, reaching hesitantly up with both hands. He leaned towards her. "You're okay..." She got her hands on his chest, and then on the sides of his head as he stooped; she got him to focus completely on her, on her and on his own shaking. This was bigger than her, wasn't it? Bigger than a little cut on her scalp.

Charlie had been out living some kind of fake plastic normal life.

Bee had been fighting a war.

Slowly, right there, right before her and in front of two other robots whom he presumably was in command of, Bumblebee sank to his knees. His eyes closed and he curled forward, his hands closing slowly around where she was standing. She leaned her brow into his chin, feeling shaky suddenly herself, raising and curling her arms around the sides of his face and the top of his head, just under his fluttering antenna. All that _anger_ she'd seen him the day he'd fought off Dropkick and Shatter and those military harpoon guns, it had been for her safety, yeah, but it had been more than that: It had been some kind of PTSD. Some kind of 'I don't give a fuck about right, wrong, or any of you assholes anymore,' a release of anger and frustration. His memories had been filing back in at that time and—if Charlie read him right—maybe he'd seen every single other person he'd ever seen hurt or killed. His rage had been for her, but it had been for a long, long, long list of other people, too.

"You'e okay," Charlie repeated to him, again and again. She stroked his temple and jaw. "You're okay. Everything's okay."

...In the background, the sounds of someone sorting automotive parts started up. Ratchet had gone back to work, incident apparently already forgiven. A quick glance to the side showed Jazz didn't seem particularly dismayed with the whole situation either. If anything, he looked _relieved_ it hadn't gotten worse.

Okay.

Wow, okay.

Ratchet might have come off as an asshole who disliked 'young hot shots' but apparently he had no interest in changing the line of command. Considering his commanding officer was flipping out and threatening to stab him, two things had to be true. One: Autobot military philosophy was way different from human military philosophy. Two: This whole group's... what was the word for it? _Morale_. Their morale was in a real sorry state.

Charlie breathed in between her teeth, and whispered an earnest, "I'm sorry I'm late," into yellow plating.

It took a long, heavy moment for Bee to respond, but then at last big blue eyes opened to look at her again, and there was a beaten down and sad look to them. He sank back on his heels, hands at her shoulders. His radio dial rolled back and forward and his speakers eased on to the sound of static, and broke into song: "♫ And I wonder(wo-wo-wo-wo-wonder) why? (why why why why why?) ♫ " 

Charlie had grown up with this song, and while it wasn't her favorite, a smirk tugged her face. "Keep playing," she suggested.

Bee blinked soulfully at her. "♫ And I wonder... if she will sta-ee-ay...? My little runaway... A run run run run, runaway... ♫ "

Charlie smiled more and more. She reached up to the top of his head, to pull him down just a little more, and she leaned into his brow and faceplate and kissed his forehead. "Sure thing, Bee."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Runaway is ironically a song of a guy who's girl has left him; but the lyrics show up just right to describe a girl who left her family to join a guy, so it works for Bee's purposes!
> 
> The [original](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S13mP_pfEc&list=RD0S13mP_pfEc) came out in 1961  
But Elvis was covering it in the 70s, so, being something done by Elvis, [it would have been everywhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTEqaQ90wi4) while Charlie was a child.  
And then of course the Beatles had to come along to sing the version you're probably actually familiar with in ['84 right in time for Charlie's age group!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5ZcxKNP1xc)
> 
> I also cheated one word of the lyric. IT'S MAH STORY I DO WHAT I WANT.


	11. Oddly Specific, Charlie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eventually we will come to a point where I can no longer keep up this pace, but for now let's just enjoy ourselves. Remember that the easiest way to keep track of me down the line will be to subscribe to the fic so you get updates, unless you're one of those people who really does check their Bookmarks every day!

They'd said they were going out to 'get the scrap,' but apparently that meant _a corpse._

Bee trudged wearily back up to his feet as they returned, and Charlie shuffled in to stay close against his leg. He seemed mentally and physically exhausted, drooping like gravity was heavier than usual. His gaze slid over to the other Autobots like he anticipated some kind of confrontation, but if the two of them had heard them throwing his tantrum, then neither figured this was the time to say anything. 

Dino, the one with the least emotive face and hardest expression, looked like he was trying to hide a limp. Ironhide, the big guy coming in behind him, stood head and shoulders above almost everyone else in the room, but that also meant he had to stoop heavily to get in under the awning. They were carrying what she imagined to be a dead Decepticon. Although they laid it down in an almost respectful manner, its proximity to Ratchet left her pretty sure they'd soon be scavenging it for parts. 

Dino shrank back against a wall and was silent. Ironhide shuffled around near Ratchet. Ratchet didn't call Charlie back over to help him out, and avoided looking up from his work. He was laying out a set of gaskets she'd just brought him. No one talked to Bumblebee or even about him, and Charlie—a little bewildered—felt like she was at a Thanksgiving party where some teenager had already yelled poignant on-target insults and stalked off to slam a bedroom door, and everyone else was left complementing the cranberry sauce until the numbing silence had worn off and the flow of normal conversation had resumed.

But Maybe fixing this wasn't Charlie's job. Maybe she just needed to pipe down and take her cues from the bots right now.

Ironhide asked a few questions in Cybertronian that went over her head. Then hunkered down over the corpse with his hands on his hips. 

"Anything exciting to brief me on?" Ratchet muttered.

The big guy shrugged. "Nah. Sent the whole lot of em packing with their tailpipes saggin' near to the ground. 'Scept this idiot." Then he started in on the Decepticon, pulling up plates and popping bolts with his bare hands, until he'd gotten to the internals. He picked out organs, gears, and wires with something of a practiced manner, like he knew the jist of what he was looking at. There was a lot of purple fluid in there.

Jazz gagged dramatically, showing off a completely gray tongue and shuddering violently. Like Ratchet, Jazz had a smooth silicon skin; unlike Ratchet, he was expressive in using it. Charlie covered a snicker, and then smiled hesitantly as Jazz's attention came over to her again. Her hands were still stained pretty brown, but the lack of purple must have been good enough; Jazz gave her a tentative little wave, Chralie waved back, and this time he seemed delighted instead of repulsed.

"What do you think?" Ironhide eventually asked, holding out a pump to Ratchet.

"It'll do for now."

Ironhide passed it over. "How were things here, by the way?" he prompted.

Ratchet gave Charlie a glance. "Passable, after the initial misunderstanding was out of the way." 

Charlie was pretty sure that was as nice as Ratchet's complements came. She flashed him a little thumbs up.

Bee took in a deep breath suddenly, like this little conversation had helped bring him back into the present. He buzzed a questioning tone, like it was a proper sentence with all the words missing. And here was the rub about it: Charlie had heard enough Cybrtronian in the past hour to be pretty sure Bee's whole voice was ruined and not just bits specific to English; he wasn't _really _talking right now, but, somehow, clearly, the robots were 'hearing' full sentences:

Like how Jazz suddenly perked up and spun away from their unwitting organ donor, acting like he'd just been asked to volunteer for something: "Me! I-I'll patrol the perimeter!" he gushed. 

"Yeah," Ironhide pushed himself back up with his hands on his knees. "I'll go with you."

Dino didn't stay long either. He threw his head back and drank motor oil straight from a jar like it was a tumbler of hard liquor, complete with a wince and everything. Then he ducked out and they heard him walking about just outside the awning. Watching him go, Charlie kinda understood. The space under this awning was cramped even with just two bots in it, and on top of that it smelled intensely of of death. Not exactly a great hang-out location.

"Can, um," Charlie belatedly remembered Bumblebee's holographic radar tracker cassette tape, and fiddled with it, "can Bumblebee talk to everyone else with radio waves I can't hear, or does everyone know some kind of verbal Morse Code?"

"Not specifically the type of electromagnetic frequency used for radio," Ratchet grumbled, "and not using _sound_. But, yes, he can transmit the equivalent of written Cybertronian to us."

"Oh." Charlie thought about that, and then realized it felt in-character for Bee to 'talk' out loud even while in the act of sending radio mail. Bee wasn't a quiet person. He buzzed, he tweeted, he beeped and twittered and warbled. He was one of the more vocal people she knew. "So do you—do _you _want any more help?"

The medic side-eyed Bee, like he was checking on someone's mood with an absolute minimum amount of eye-contact. "What I want is to be left alone to work for a few hours before recharge."

Alright. Fair.

Bumblebee chirped at her. A yellow and black hand settled on Charlie's head and brushed worriedly over her sticky hair, and she decided she ought to make use of that water spicket to clean herself up a bit more. Anything to take that one extra level of stress off everyone.

* * *

Charlie wasn't exactly sure what 'patrol' entailed, but it definitely lasted long enough for her to remember she hadn't eaten dinner. 

The mood had at least lightened up once her hair was clean of blood, with Bee once more humming and cooing thoughtfully to himself. Dino was sort of avoiding them, but even just having him slinking around looking waspish, blue, and admittedly sort of majestic in the background was its own form of context. The five of them were so completely different from one another, in everything from build, color, basic underlying materials, and facial structure. 

She was really here. With them. With Bee, specifically.

Man, she really owed him a better explanation for what she was doing here.

Charlie got Spaghetti-O's out of her car, fumbled around the car looking for a can opener, and then turned to Bee, who managed to carefully cut the lid open after she prewarned him about not squishing it. They were surrounded by microwaves and ovens, all of them were broken, so she just ate everything cold out of the can. Bee lingered silently next to her. He absently stroked a finger down the corvette.

"I know, isn't she sexy?" Charlie asked, stifling a yawn.

Bee blinked rapidly and looked over at her with one antenna lifted and the other down. "Vwwee uuu!?" His shoulders came forward and his body language got positively bashful.

Charlie nearly snorted out Speghetti-O's. "Not what I meant! Bee!" she shoved at him. "I wasn't asking whether you wanted to make go-carts with my corvette! I just meant: Doesn't it look really nice?"

"Wooooh..." he agreed it was a job well done.

"Finished it about a month after you left. Just floored it down the highway, wind in my hair..." She took in a deep breath, staring at the horizon. "I didn't think about you. I didn't miss you. I didn't wait in front of the TV at night worrying. I didn't tune in to any of it at all, I acted like it every day was normal. I was normal."

Charlie was staring back through time. She couldn't even see much of the red dawn peeking out of the forest ahead of her. And she definitely didn't see the way Bumblebee's wings trembled and dropped, or the way his eyes rounded, or the way each word made the same impact as if somebody had been throwing flashbangs at him. She had no concept of the fact 'I just want to have a normal life now' was something Bee had heard again...

...and again....

_...and again._

Because, always, Bumblebee was the abnormality. The thing that didn't fit. The alien creature whose help had been appreciated, and who had been 'totally awesome' once, but who was now an interruption, an invasion of an otherwise idyllic life, a problem. Once the novelty of 'oh wow, a transforming car!' had worn off, kids eventually grew too old for Bee. He always became the_ one thing_ which, if he could just be gotten_ rid of_ somehow and forgotten and relegated to the past, would finally allow his friends to have everything they ever wanted: A normal life.

Plus whenever Bee left and showed back up inside that normal life, he was always the harbinger of bad news. His arrival meant something was exploding. He always had to do triage and first aid on everyone else's unraveling emotional state; because inevitably his once-friend was sad and angry their perfect idyllic _everything _had been ruined—again.

"And then when I got here, it hit me," Charlie shook her head. "Just. Hit me. I'd been trying to figure it out the whole way here, and I couldn't; or maybe I didn't let myself. But here it hit me: I realized that I'd done the same thing I did to my Dad," Charlie said. "I put him away in a box so I didn't have to see him. Didn't have to see the memory of losing him. I could just... pretend there never was a Dad, and if I did that, if I lived like that, never looking at those memories... I didn't have to miss him.

"I could just be mad at everyone else who didn't seem to miss him either.

"The same thing happened: I couldn't get excited the whole way driving out here because I still had everything in that box. But it was a thin box. Stretching thinner, and thinner around everything I'd put in it. For the last three years, everything I thought—verbally, with words, everything I said or did—was all normal. It was what I was supposed to do, and built the life I'd have lived if 'someone important' had never existed, and also couldn't be missed.

"And it was all to cover up the fact that I did miss someone. That I didn't like letting go," she blinked rapidly and then looked slowly back at him, tears in her eyes. "I missed you the whole time, Bee. The whole time. Every single time I got in this corvette and took off it, it wasn't to think about my Dad. It wasn't to be closer to him, not anymore. It was because I really wanted to be somewhere else and I needed an hour or two hours or longer to not think about it, so it'd go away. Cause it always felt like I had no business really leaving, no right to be any other place than where I was; I had to let go because I wasn't needed or even useful, I had to let you go.

"And—and that was the truth: I missed you the whole time you were gone. Every single day."

She found wide eyes just fixed on her. Bee didn't thrum or tremble or buzz or anything; he was very still and very quiet, and leaning on one hand so heavily her corvette was tilting.

Charlie smirked at that look on him. "Um. I get it you've probably got plenty of Autobot best friends that you remember now, but... It looks like you're shorthanded for now, at least." She looked at her can. "Can I be here? Is there stuff I can do to help?"

A radio dial twirled. "♫But baby don't you wanna go home...?♫"

Charlie eyed him, tossed her shoulders, and then reached under her dash to pull out a real cassette tape. "You know what? I'm gonna answer you with more of your least favorite band," she said, and stood up on her seat. She knocked on his chest plate. Zip! A panel raised out of the way, exposing his radio. She pushed in the tape, took the controls from him, and tried to estimate how far to fast forward.

_♫_ _Oh, please don't drop me home_  
_ Because it's not my home, it's their home— ♫_

The radio interrupted her, "♫Danger, danger, he's dangerous—♫"

Charlie pushed play again, interrupting the radio:

_♫ And if a double-decker bus_   
_ Crashes into us_   
_ To die by your side_   
_ Is such a heavenly way to die ♫_

"Vwwwuh-hhhhhiie...?" Bee's shoulders sagged like he was trying to figure out why on earth Charlie had an affection for dark songs like this.

_♫ And if a ten-ton truck_   
_ Kills the both of us_   
_ To die by your side_   
_ Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine ♫_

Bee whined and buzzed. 'These are oddly specific lyrics, Charlie,' he seemed to say, 'and I'm not sure I like them.'

Charlie started laughing at him, or at herself, or at her own favorite music.

_♫ I don't care, I don't care. ♫_

Bee eased his weight off her corvette. He gently ejected her tape instead of spitting it out into a scrapyard at night where she'd never manage to find it again. No sooner had she taken it than he scooped her up in metal, rubber, and polymer hands. Each finger twitched gently in contact with her, folding under her butt and the hollow of her knee and the small of her back. He picked her up towards his shoulder and pressed her in there under his chin and against the soft rubber coating of his neck. He shrugged his shoulder up a bit to keep her there, to encompass her.

Not for the first time, Charlie wondered if the difference between his softer areas and his metal armor was anything like the difference between human skin and hermit crab shells. The backs of his fingers were metal and the undersides were like pleather, but that might have been more for grip than sensitivity. But if not, if his rubberized areas really did have greater sensitivity than his metal, then his neck might be more sensitive to the touch of squishy humans and their tiny limbs than the metal plates of his face were. Eh. Regardless. She hugged herself to _all_ of him. It seemed she had no shortage of hugs to give, and Bee had no shortage of plates, ridges, and fuel lines to cling to.

Bee leaned weight from foot to foot. Each lean turned into a sashay from side to side. Then he started bouncing, yes, _bouncing,_ and Charlie choked out laughter because this was a bit like being in an earthquake or repeatedly floundering elevator. "Bee!" she complained, and instead of stopping he just squeezed her tighter. Securely fastened down by his hands, she decided the ride was a bit more like an amusement park ride than an earthquake. His radio came on, his volume low to not draw the attention of the others, particularly as this song involved a full choir and orchestra:

"♫ Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halle-e-lu-u-jah! (And he shall reign for ever and e-e—) Hallelujah! Hallelujah! ♫"

"Where did you get Christmas music in summer!?" she complained but then decided if Bee had recorded her own voice, he could have a thousand clips from every song he'd ever thought 'I might need that at a time it's unavailable on the radio.'

"♫ Joy to the World! (bbbz!) ♫ Angels we have heard on high! (zzzstt!) And we're b-b-b-b-back with the hottest deals of the year, right here this summer! (sssh!) You'll shoot your eye out, kid! (ZZZT) Bambi? Bambi! (bzzz) Frankly m'dear, I don't give a damn. (Vsssh) And he's hit out out of the paaaarkkk! (rrrerrerrr!) Weeeeeeeeeee-heeeeee-heeee!" A crowd or stadium was screaming, none of that made any sense, and Charlie only laughed and maybe leaked a few more tears while she was at it. 

Dino came close to hiss something at them that involved far too much Cybertronian for Charlie to follow. Bee sassed him right back. 

Somebody (or two somebodies; maybe even six somebodies) needed a nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bee I'm not sure you heard her the first time, so let her try again. Ahem. SHE'S STAYING EVEN IF A LARGE VEHICLE KILLS THE BOTH OF YOU. Was that- does everyone agree that's clear, everyone? yes? no? pretty clear?
> 
> The song that dominates this chapter is [There Is A Light That Never Goes Out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siO6dkqidc4), by The Smiths. The first ever song Bee spat at her was also by The Smiths, it was 'Girlfriend in a coma'. (A moment that also established Charlie has excellent ducking skills, going to help with those future wrenches imho) 
> 
> And then of course there's [The Hallelujah Chorus,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI6dsMeABpU) in case you didn't know what it was called and had just heard it randomly in media here and there.
> 
> Bee again misuses lyrics to fit his needs! Neither song is actually being used for its actual content, just the convenience of having words line up properly for Bee to successfully ask questions, so they're not important to appreciate the scene. Unless you want to just visualize what his radio sounds like while he's talking to her, in which case: ["Baby don't you wanna go home?"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Jc4nnfgoZM) and ["Danger, danger, he's dangerous!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehAvFpSFcfA)


	12. Olfactory Soothsaying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my chapter titles make sense if you squint really hard, but normally only after you've read the whole thing.

Unfriendly Dino wasn't impressed with Bee's muted hysterics, or his dance moves. When nagging failed to work, the blue and white striped bot crossed his arms judgmentally. "Its vehicle is blocking a quick exit," he finally said, when Bee showed no shame and even twirled around with Charlie in arm to spite him.

"I'll move it," Charlie volunteered. "Bee, c'mon!"

"Vuuuuuu," his voice sank like a science fiction sound effect. Their brief playtime was over. He set her back into the front seat of her car and then tapped the hood to indicate she should follow and hopped quickly off to find a good location for her to park.

Charlie restarted the engine, even knowing full well her corvette—her and her dad's corvette—was most probably going to be being positioned as bait just like that old Formula One racer, and might even end up getting blown to bits by alien missiles. Well, she'd live. Better an inanimate car than a live one.

As she parked, Charlie sniffed at the air, hesitated, and eyeballed the dark sky above them. She couldn't see much. Charlie put up the soft top just to be safe. Bee crooned curiously.

"I think it’s going to rain," she said.

Bee turned his head to the side and only one antenna went up. It was a very cute expression. Then his eyes widened and he turned back to the awning and pointed, humming and warbling like he was trying to tell her something.

Briefly, Charlie thought Bee was concerned for her car, which made sense if you knew anything about how to store and preserve antiques. Cars that had never seen rain lasted longer, and cars that had never seen snow lasted even longer than that. In California there was rarely either, and no real reason to keep the corvette inside.

On a tangentially related note: Why did Charlie's have sole ownership of the family garage? Why did Ron always park outside? The answer was probably on the first page of Ron's favorite Life Coaching and Psychology books, and maybe went something like this: Ron was awkward around power tools, Ron was not incredibly masculine, and maybe for those and other reasons, Ron acted respectful of the one remaining room that had unequivocally belonged to the previous man of the house.

Or, alternatively, Ron was just trying to be a good step-dad by never intruding on Charlie's space.

(After her certification, Ron and Sally had thrown a barbecue and invited all their friends, and Ron'd been tipsy and had joked Charlie was more of a man than he was. In a rare bonding moment, only Ron and Charlie had laughed, and everyone else had gotten extremely awkward like it ought to have been an insult.)

Anyway! Back in the present: Charlie was about to wave off Bee's concerns because this wasn't the time to be a stickler over the condition of old cars, when her eye caught the tattered old awning again and remembered her corvette wasn't the only 'car' that might need some protection. Snapping her fingers in realization, she left her car and jogged alongside Bee's wide stride to return.

"Ratchet!" she called, and ignored the intensely irritated sigh that answered her. "It smells like it's going to rain."

"'It _smells_ like it is _going to _rain? Do you engage in other forms of olfactory soothsaying, or are you attempting to imply future atmospheric conditions somehow have an odor?"

Charlie shuttered her eyes up at him. "Yes."

Bee backed her up by searching through AM radio stations until he found a weather broadcast. Sure enough, rain was almost on top of them. The forecast immediately put the medic in a bad mood.

"As if I didn't have enough things to focus on or sufficient ailments to direct fuel to," he snarled, throwing down a wrench. "I'm not perching on this fool's scrap to keep out of puddles. Find me some palettes or something, anything to get a servospan off the ground. "

Charlie saluted, Bee recruited Dino, and together the three of them quickly evaluated their surroundings. They picked some concentric tires that fit inside each other, and made Ratchet a little dais. Bee took one arm and Dino the other and, despite his protests that he could move his own tailpipe, they helped him up and onto his new seat. They got a few more tires to prop his table up off the ground, too.

Once the medic and all his things were successfully above flood level, Dino left again almost immediately. Being inside a hospital could be stuffy; Charlie had visited her mom on bring your kid to work day just once, and once was too much.

"So the blue one name's Dino?" Charlie asked Ratchet as she scoured the floor for any forgotten nuts, bolts or tools that might have rolled away in their hurry to move everything.

Ratchet scoffed and didn't look up from his work. "His formal designation is not Dino, it is _Mirage. _And you'd do best to avoid him. He's not fond of organics."

"Yeah, caught that vibe," she shot a glare at Bee who covered his mouth and snickered. "And the other two, Large Guy and Sunglasses Boy, those are Ironhide and Jazz?"

"Jazz is significantly older than Bumblebee—although I can see why you would be confused, seeing as he is perpetually immature." Apparently Ratchet was willing to talk to Charlie again if it meant preventing Bee from communicating any more misinformation. "We have different size categories and do not grow from one to the other. As for Ironhide, she is one of few Autobots older than I. She trained Optimus Prime, and—unlike these other fools—deserves your deference on any matter upon which she gives her expertise."

Charlie's brows shot up. "'She?'"

Ratchets irritable eye-roll reminded her that he'd fairly recently asked her to _go away _so he could focus on his repairs. "Cybertonians are in no way bound to your myopic, human concept of sexual dimorphism, just as I am not bound to explain anything further to you. As far as you are to be concerned, the closest pronoun in your language is 'she,' and the proper form of address is 'ma'am;' and it is in fact insulting to watch when your kind repeatedly slips."

Took Charlie a second to process that, thinking back to in high school gender roles, the dynamic between Tina and Trip, and what it had once felt like to have a crush on a big strong handsome guy.

So...? Ha! But that meant—? Yeah. Ironhide was the biggest, broadest, most weapons-heavy 'bot in the group, right? Yeah! Charlie smirked to herself, and finally decided, "No, that's actually pretty gnarly. I think I'm definitely going to remember that one."

* * *

Thunder crackled and boomed. The rain came at them in such an aggressive front they could hear it moving at them through the trees in the distance, a slowly growing roar.

Jazz, apparently, successfully out-road the whole thing, because he hit the awning so fast he had to transform and grab the ground to slow himself down. He came within an inch of punching a new hole through the shelter's rear wall, stopped just in time, and sighed a "phew." He was dry.

Ironhide wasn't so lucky and lumbered into the shelter as a hefty 1986 Ford F350 SuperCab and Charlie blew a low whistle at the 4x4. Jazz perked up in surprise.

"Nice outfit!" Charlie complemented one of the bossiest looking pickup trucks man had ever built.

"Aw yeah? Femmes always like the Porsche!" Jazz purred.

"I meant her."

The 4x4 honked. Then it continued to sit there in alternate form. Maybe to let all the water drain off before transforming and potentially flicking moisture up inside and ending up dripping for hours.

What time was it? Past midnight? Later? Morning probably ought to be on the horizon, but it didn't feel like it. The sky outside was black. And it didn't just rain, it poured. It rained so hard it sounded like hailstones on the awning and surrounding scrap. Ratchet looked irritable and uncomfortable, but didn't say anything. Charlie hovered near him and packed away a pile of parts he'd already sorted through and didn't need.

"Taking first watch," Dino (er, Mirage?) volunteered, apparently unable to stand the cramped quarters a second longer. He headed out into the storm and even stood in it, chin lifted, apparently letting it wash combat away.

Jazz gave him a weird look like this behavior wholly baffled him. Charlie was at this point getting a little silly from lack of sleep, and tried to figure out if Jazz merely considered 'water' to be one of those disgusting and suspicious fluids like blood; or if maybe instead he was being practical and hadn't wanted to be in Ironhide's position of waiting to dry.

Maybe neither. Maybe <strike>Dino</strike> Mirage was like a normal person who loved watching a storm come in, and Jazz was like a normal person who hated rainy days and couldn't stand to be caught out in one.

Jazz got to his feet, shook his head, and then looked deeper in to the alcove. He came closer. Oh? Jazz, apparently, wanted another look at Charlie.

"Hey, little mamma!" he waved, apparently much more excited to see her now that her fingers were only stained with motor oil. Mental note: The purple stuff is definitely blood. "Your name's Charlie?"

Bee reached out and looped a forearm casually over Jazz's shoulder like he wanted to tell her they were friends. But then—oh!—he lifted up a hand over Jazz's head at roughly his own height, clearly making fun of his height.

"What are you-? HEY!" Jazz shoved him. "Yo, not cool, that is one thing humans taught you I don't dig!" Bee playfully bounced away as Jazz came after him, but there really wasn't much room in here for tussles and no one was more aware of that than the guy they both nearly fell on.

"Do - you - mind!?" Ratchet growled. "I am BUSY, and you are stepping on-"

Ironhide folded out of truck mode and grabbed two tussling 'hot shots' by the scruff—whatever armored ridges were available at their collar. She pulled them apart and back.

"Dino's right," said a large strong woman who was _not_ referring to the Blue Velociraptor guy by his formal designation of 'Mirage,' further complicating the issue of what Charlie was eventually supposed to call him. "It's time for recharge. Might not get a chance later."

"Aw, man Ironhide," Jazz complained, "we was just havin' fun! Could use more of that around here lately with you two—" Ironhide gave him a gentle jab, and he muttered and grumbled off into a corner and turned himself back into a nice small little Porsche.

Bee got back to Charlie, nudged her gently aside, and transformed down into—she looked back—a Mustang. Charlie didn't give out any more low whistles, seeing as Ratchet was getting temperamental, but she hoped Bee could see her expression. A+ vehicular choice, Bumble.

"Ratchet," Ironhide segued.

Ratchet didn't agree with his bedtime. "I'm working, Ironhide."

Ironhide actually reached out and touched Ratchet's head. "Two breem," she said like it was a gentle ultimatum, and then folded away back into a truck.

Charlie looked from vehicle, to vehicle, to vehicle. She figured Ratchet was too tired to really interact with her, and Charlie was too tired to be of any use. She finished re-packing the unneeded parts, and then stifled a yawn,

Glancing around at the packed earth ground and scrap and oil, she came to the easy decision this was no place to try and lay down and sleep for the night. Way too cold with the rain, too. So she started looking for a makeshift umbrella. A big plate of tin roofing looked like it'd do the trick.

"I'll see you in the morning Bee," she called behind her, and didn't glance back to see him pull forward a few inches in surprise.

Dino/Mirage was invisible, wherever he'd gone to, easily hidden by scrap and rain. Charlie's corvette wasn't far. She headed for the door, got it open as fast as possible, fell in butt first, and closed the door behind her. The tin went off to her passenger seat.

Charlie crawled into the two seater, and pulled her blankets out from under the passenger. She flopped awkwardly over the stick shift. She stared at the ceiling through the gloom. She breathed in deep, out deep, listening to her heart.

This wasn't a dream. She really had driven herself all the way out here. She was here.

Charlie pulled the blankets over her head and, not for the first time, wished she'd thought to grab her pillow off her bed as well.

Maybe it was for the best. If her Mom had come early and caught her sneaking out with her car packed full of car parts...

Would that have been enough to stop her, or had the moment in the supermarket had been a kind of reawakening, after which everything she'd felt could never again be put back inside Pandora's box?

Charlie pulled the blankets over her head and tried to sleep.

And funnily enough... no matter how tired she was... no matter how many bruises she had or how the rain provided a kind of soothing white noise...

... She just couldn't fall asleep.

* * *

Sleeplessness was how she heard the tire tracks sneaking behind her. She wondered if Dino's problem with humans was really that serious, that he'd try and confront her alone. The tires stopped in the gravel somewhere near the rear bumper of her car, twisted in place, and twisted again.

Then her guest beeped at her.

Charlie dragged her blankets down and shouldered her way up into a seat against her door. She saw the side of a yellow mustang through the rain.

Her heart tied itself up in a knot.

Without having to give it a second's thought, she wadded up all her blankets, threw open her corvette door, and swung her feet out into the rain. The mustang rear door popped open instantly, and she lunged for it, threw her blankets in, and kicked her corvette door closed. She kicked her way into the mustang and raised her knees so he could get the door shut.

It was silent but for the rain for a few seconds.

"Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking," Charlie admitted into the quiet. "This is the better plan. You don't mind?"

Windshield wipers flashed past just once, like a person shaking their head.

"Cool." She started kicking off her shoes, and left them on the floor. She unrolled her blankets and made them serviceable. Bee turned his nose around and headed back for the awning. She glanced out the window and saw only cars now.

The Ford truck had a towing apparatus, she'd failed to notice previously, and it was presently in use: Hiked up with its butt in the air and it’s rear axel secured was a severely damaged ambulance. Much of it's flank and one of it's tires were missing.

The image struck her as adorable and sobering at the same time. On one hand, they were all sleeping and the two oldest members were back to back with each other, with one letting the other lay on her for support. On the other hand they were all clearly ready to bolt at a moment's notice, and the real reason Ratchet was hiked up in a towing position wasn't just to protect his injuries from contact with the ground and puddles of water; it was also so if they had to flee, he wouldn't get left behind. Ironhide could pull him through whatever hit them, be it humans or Decepticons.

With that sort of bittersweet picture in her head, Charlie shuffled back down to rest on the (much more comfortable than her two-seater would ever be) car bench, and to wrap herself in blankets.

"Night, Bee."

He played a woman's reassuring croon back to her: "Don't let the bed bugs bite," and Charlie just smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said Ironhide was inspired by a Celtic/Irish trainer of heroes, but I'm simultaneously picturing a heavyset black woman with her hair in dreads yelling 'everybody lights out or I'll whoop yoh asses, scept you, ratch, you finish up in fifteen minutes, kay hon, good boy.' And then like licking her thumb to smear that bit of dirt off Bee or Jazz's face, classic mom style.


	13. Thinkin' in the Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing to see here, just the author enjoying a slow, methodical, winding jaunt through the exploration of a relationship between man and machine...

Bumblebee didn't wake Charlie for his watch. He brought his engine on as quietly as possible, slid smoothly out into the rain to switch places with Mirage, and idled to a halt in his favorite stakeout position. The ground was a little uneven, but he kept precision control of his shocks to not bump her around.

_Still asleep?_

She didn't move.

_Phew._

He settled himself into place. His mind wandered, which, _woops,_ it wasn't supposed to do while he was being vigilant. _Scrap,_ he couldn't help it. There were a lot of memories jamming his processors right now. Memories of people, and places:

Colorado, Nevada, Illinois, New York, the Keys—pause there for some cheesy childish wonderment at the hugeness of both oceans, and the hugeness of Earth in general, so much bigger than Cybertron!—and then back to California again, but father south, to stay for awhile in a suburb of Los Angeles.

Bumblebee had been living apart from his fellow Autobots to protect the Witwicky family. And each and every time Sam had gotten on the highway headed north, he and Bee would see the same signs, signs Sam had once pointed out the meaning of:

_San Francisco, 320 miles, North._  
_ Los Angels, 60 miles, South._

(San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco. _Saaaannn Fraaannn-sis-coooo_ was where the bridge was, the big one, the bridge from which Bumblebee could work backwards to find Charlie's parents' house again.)

But, always, inevitably, after just two or three miles, be it for school, work, or errands; it was always south and Los Angeles Sam and Bee had returned to. In over a year of living with him, Bee never dared to take off and leave Sam unprotected. Not once. He'd been Sam's Guardian! What if something had happened!? And, okay, on top of that, Bee had thoroughly, thoroughly, _thoroughly_ enjoyed living a boring 'normal' life in LA. He'd been so excited about 'college,' because Sam had been excited...

(Bee had first come online during the war. Everyone else forgot that and called him 'sentimental.' They didn't realize these memories with his human friends were the only thing Bee knew about peacetime. The only frame of reference he had for what they'd all been fighting for. He didn't need a million of those memories, but he wanted at least a few...)

Anyway, Bee showing up in San Francisco would only have brought trouble back to Charlie, and screwed up her life the same way it had the Witwicky's. She was still anonymous. Safe! Not only did the bad guys not know about her, but Sector Seven had clearly considered her to be just a random bystander and not a Person of Interest. Besides, Bee had made sure she'd know where to find him, if she ever needed him. There was no - possible - way she hadn't found the tracker in her music collection; she was in that box every day!

The tracker.

_Man._

In the beginning, maybe the tracker had been a 'goodbye, but not forever.' She was the first human he'd ever met! They were still a novelty—he'd expected them to_ last._ Then, over three years, he'd been forced to get used to the idea that humans' presence in his life was sweet but fleeting, whether he liked it or not. Bittersweet. Nice while it lasted; but always over quickly.

Humans had short lives. Yeah, Bee got that. They had to get through everything quickly. It was just their way. They were like bright, bright, bright little plasma bolts. Each set of new memories, each set of new people, each place, it had it's time, and then it was gone. He understood.

(It still always felt unfair.)

(But that was probably selfishness talking because Bee had gotten enamored with all the tiny things going on in their itty bitty lives, and he'd always played off how much a certain war had deep-down affected them.)

("Freshmen aren't allowed to have cars on campus, Bee; it's not my fault, okay, it's the rules. Besides you shouldn't be here, you should be with he other Autobots, not living in my parents' garage...!")

War was all Bumblebee really knew. It was life. He could make fun of it. He could skate off walls and even heads to get his blaster where it counted! He didn't need things to be peaceful to have a good time, and, uh, other people sort of did need things to be peaceful.

And when you got down to it, Bee would never give up soldiering! Well, like, unless there was absolutely no need for it. (What would he do with himself? What job credentials did he have? What a crazy thing to worry about.) 

A long time ago, when Bee had finally been old enough to _understand_ what it all meant,Optimus had given him the option to leave the war and join the neutrals.

As if Bee would ever, ever, ever do that? Leave Optimus? Pick squatting on a broken, tired world, wringing his fingers worrying about the blaster bolts flying overhead when he could instead be hanging out with the Autobots and making a difference?! Nev-er! Bee had _wanted_ to fight. He'd lied about his make, model, age and origins just to get secondary commanders to put him in more and more dangerous positions.

Bee liked the adrenaline. He liked feeling purposeful. He liked pulling off the impossible and making everyone proud. And, from a very, very early age, he'd seen how much it had hurt Optimus when people didn't come home from missions; so Bumblebee had made that _his _job: Get everyone home alive.

(A little 'vacation' hanging out with friends hadn't hurt, Bee admitted.)

(With Sam, Rafael, Coby...)

Charlie shifted around in her sleep and Bee held his breath. She didn't wake up. He vented a long sigh into the muffle of the rain.

_I can't believe you're here right now. _He wished he could hug her like this. He thought about the tracker. 

That tracker...

He still hadn't taken it back from her and he didn't want to. Eventually, it had stopped symbolizing a promise of reconnection in the future, and started being something of himself he left with her. A memento. A long goodbye. A way to know his spark was still online, somewhere far away, if that was the kind of thing she sometimes worried about. Peace of mind.

(A little part of him had wished he'd had the same thing in reverse, something of her. But he also wasn't going to bug the one tiny human in whose life he hadn't overstayed his welcome.)

(But it _did _bring her back! She's here right now!)

_You're supposed to be on watch, 'Lieutenant.'_

Mocking himself in his own head only made Bumblebee scoff and grin. Optimus trusted Bee, and Bee trusted Optimus to have good judgement, so naturally Bee simply had to trust his own command enough to make light of it. _Dino, _heh, might never like it, but Bee understood the job of leadership well enough to be good at it.

And to know in which respects he was still lacking.

Bumblebee admitted to himself his thoughts about his friends in general and about Charlie in specific were sort of all over the place and didn't connect especially well. That was okay. Bee didn't need them to make sense. He felt better just for thinking about them at all.

His healing parts itched and he resisted the urge to free an arm and scratch, as he'd never get all the water out of his trunk afterward and might even accidentally splash his precious cargo...

This rain was really, really, really heavy....

The tracker.

_....'I missed you the whole time.'_

Bee made a sharp intake of atmosphere through his grill, feeling like he'd surprised himself.

Then he thought about bits of holographic footage he kept of Charlie, of memories: Of her reaching towards his face to touch him for the very first time. It was something he'd played for himself several times when alone in Sam's garage but definitely never shared with anyone. 

_Can I keep her safe?_ That concern rolled away. He'd manage! It didn't matter how bad things had felt earlier in the week; they felt better now. Besides, Charlie was really good at keeping herself safe. Like really good, and Bee had rescued enough humans to be a bit of an expert.

And oh yeah—ha!—he was going to record a whole bunch of new things in her voice so he could use them all over the place. Like everyone's name and common expressions; and something mean and funny to say to Hot Rod and Arcee next time he saw them... Hahahahah!

Bumblebee played her voice softly back to her, soft as he could play it: "I missed you the whole time (....) Charlie Watson."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holograms kept by Bee was inspired by Youkaiyume's comic "Touched Starved," which you can see here at [Nothing but Salt...](https://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/182451022273/touch-starved-hello-yes-i-have-robot-feels)


	14. Perfectly Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random songs used by Bee this chapter, none of which are used in full, all of which are used just for a single line. Thank you TheWonderfulShoe for help with them!
> 
> ["Just take your time, just take your time"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-mugESBIhY) is from You Wear Those Eyes By The Cars.
> 
> ["I have to admit, it's getting better..."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqomuMaW1Fw) courtesy of the Beatles
> 
> ["He's a liar!"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_fJqZ6jBAs) is from the BeesGees, which is appropriately named.

Charlie woke with an urgent drive in her breast: The same sensation that had been pushing her east all week. Failing to notice she'd been roused by the sounds of heavy feet walking around, she reached up groggily for the corvette headrests to pull herself upright, only to realize those headrests had the wrong shape and texture. The upholstery was also a mix of shocking yellow and dark, bold graphite.

Charlie was already where she was supposed to be: In the back seat of a vehicle that was much more than it appeared. Her hammering heart took half a minute to work on that, to puzzle it all out and make sense of it on a physiological level. Then she released the headrest and wiped her face.

"Hey," she croaked, massaging her eyes to chase away dryness.

Nothing immediately responded and the car lay as still as... well, as a car.

Charlie's heart jumped, but shadows moving across the room proved that the other Autobots still very much existed and were already up and walking about. She could hear someone—most likely Ratchet—picking through and reassembling scrap. Stifling a yawn, Charlie scooched herself to a seat and squinted at the Mustang dash board. Every light was off, but a little clock read: 12:15 PM.

It was already afternoon? Oof.

Well, to be fair, it had been almost morning betimes anyone had gotten to sleep. if Cybertronians were anything like humans, seven hours 'recharge' after a day of heavy physical activity wasn't exactly much. (Ron had run in a cancer awareness marathon once and been KOed a grand total of fourteen hours afterward. Poor Ron, he meant well.)

"Bee?" Charlie called softly.

No response.

She leaned between the front seats and pet the dash board back and forth.

Console lights flickered briefly under her hand.

"Heeeeyy, sleepy head," she grinned. Lights flickered on again and brightened. "Hey there. I'd say good morning, but I don't think it's morning anymore."

Bee's engine started up slowly with a slow, not-exactly-car-like rumble. Then his radio switched on:

"Goooooooooood morning Amerriiicaaaaa!" he broadcasted enthusiastically like he hadn't just been out cold ten seconds before. "We're coming to you live from San Francisco California, and today's forecast is hot, hot, hot!"

Apparently it was always morning somewhere! Charlie was impressed at how good his radio was if he was picking up stations from that far away; or maybe he'd just taped it. He was right, though. "I forgot about time zones," she yawned, and then started looking for her shoes. "Give me a second."

"(Bzzzuu)—take your time, take your time—(vvv!)"

Charlie fought with her blanket, manage to get it wrapped up in a tidy square, and then figured she'd have to take it back to her car. Bumblebee was already ahead of her, engine puttering as he slipped out from under the awning and rolled casually up beside the corvette. The door opened for her as she scooted near it. She tossed her blankets on the passenger seat and rummaged for a can of breakfast.

"Hey, just so nobody forgets," she called over her shoulder to the sound of Bee transforming. "I've got about two more weeks worth of canned food, but then I'm going to have to find a supermarket."

"Twuu-ie!" Bee confirmed he understood.

"Could probably use a change of clothing right now," she also admitted to herself, sniffing at her pits. Mn. Not bad. Nowhere to shower around here anyway, so she'd put it off a little longer. Maybe she could check into a motel for a night. Eventually. Whatever worked.

Bee stooped and helped her open her breakfast soup. Which was? New England Clam Chowder. She inspected the thick white paste inside her can, eyeballed Bee's chassis and then reached up to feel his midsection. Where had the rest of his console gotten to-?

Aha! Charlie found the cigarette lighter and pressed it in with a click. Bee's antenna popped up as he tried to figure out what that new strange sensation was.

"Let me have that when that's done," she grinned, before hastily adding, "Actually, knowing how easily you end up in trouble, just tell me when it's done and I'll take it. I can just see you accidentally tossing it into the awning and burning the whole place down."

"Awwwwwaa!" Bee affected to be hurt but then rubbed awkwardly at the back of his head and did a 'well yeah that does sound like something that would happen to me' bashful look. "Boop-woop..."

She laughed and squeezed one of his fingers. Okay! She was going to have to MacGyver this a little if she just wanted to heat her soup and not burn it. Maybe pouring half of it into the empty Speghettios can from the night before and adding some water? She'd have to bring it to a boil.

A few steps towards the dimly lit awning had Charlie glancing back towards Bee. She stopped walking and looked him up and down. He was...

... Well he wasn't clean. Sexy and sleek as that Mustang look might be in concept, Bee looked worse than keyed. She hadn't been able to see him particularly well at night. Now with full illumination of a noontime sun, she could see every burn, scratch, and gouge.

Bumblebee chirruped inquisitively at her, watching as her hand came up to touch at him.

Her fingers fit inches deep where big chunks had been taken out of his forearm. He... he wasn't bleeding, was he? Not like Ratchet. No internal injuries. She didn't see any purple splashed around the cuts, but she also realized it would all have washed away in the rain last night.

How deep were these? Oof. After working for Ratchet for a few hours, Charlie could recognize the black tar at the bottom of Bee's cuts. Clots, or scabs; proof the injuries were more than cosmetic.

Bee waved a hand to brush off her concern. Charlie didn't entirely buy it. She'd seen Bee injured before, and she'd seen the toll it had taken out of him when he'd been pushed from confrontation to confrontation all without rest.

"Do these heal naturally?" she asked. "Or does someone have to fix you?"

Bee played, "♫I've got to admit, it's getting better...a little better all the time!♫" but rather than make her less worried about him it just made her more worried about Ratchet. Which then had her reviewing why she'd planned to go get water from and eat her breakfast inside a space that stank of death. The only sane answer was she wanted to see how the Autobot medic was doing.

And maybe ask him if he had another job for her. She had to make herself useful doing something, right?

"Were these cuts from yesterday?" she asked Bee.

Bee scoffed; those Decepticons had been pushovers!

"So it was something even worse?" she suspected.

"Miii-wuu!" Bee's antenna fell as he saw he'd played right into that. He hesitated, arms drawn together in that cute little 'woopsies' posture she always found adorable. Then he gave a small shrug.

"Well fine, don't tell me." She picked up her soup can. "I'll just ask... Jazz."

Bee's eyes widened and he started buzzing in alarm. Apparently there were insufficient songs for him to yell 'Nooooo, Jazz will exaggerate everything!' Bee settled for, "♫ He's a liar, He's a liar, and I should know! He's a liar and I should know, ah! ♫"

Charlie got the message and grinned to herself. "Alright, I'll ask Ratchet."

"Ziiiiiiii!" Bee floundered after her, picked her off the ground, and tried to keep her from escaping until she surrendered her quest for war stories. Charlie beat him by reminding him that he had to let her go so she could feed herself.

Bee groaned but did set her back on her feet. He trudged after her like he expected to get in trouble for something.

* * *

Ratchet didn't ask why they'd dare encroach upon his work space, and they didn't tell him. He must have been paying attention to them, however, because when she plucked out Bumblebee's cigarette lighter and tried to warm her breakfast with it, she heard his motions till. Then Ratchet casually tossed a fragment of some long gone palette near her, transformed an arm into a blaster, and—

"REEEEE!" Bee grabbed hold of her and leaned away, but of course Ratchet just targeted the wood, which exploded into simmering embers.

"_Jesus!_"

Ratchet smirked, transformed away his blaster away, and looked _smug. _

Blink blink. "Rrr." Bee was _very _unimpressed. 

"Hold on, hold on," Charlie fought her way free of yellow arms. "_Excuse_ me, Mr. Medic? Hi, Good Morning to you, too," Charlie assumed some blonde girl sass she'd previously only ever been on the receiving end of. "Look, I am over here being a cave man. You keep that new-fangled robot technology to yourself. We start our fires the old fashioned way in my family: By stealing spare lighters off our friends."

The corner of Ratchet's mouth stretched into an even wider smirk as he worked. That totally counted as a smile.

Bee hissed at him anyway for good measure, and then sat there with her, bothered and tense for a minute longer, as Charlie worked out the mystery of how to boil water without cooking her fingers. She ended up equipping her welding gloves as primitive oven mitts.

Eventually, Charlie belatedly remembered to replace her friend's cigarette lighter. Bee blinked rapidly at it, at her, and then sighed out a biiiig, high-pitched trill. Hmm. Apparently still suspicious about how Charlie's head had been injured the day before, Bee started questioning her. Or maybe questioning Ratchet. Between the song fragments and glares it was hard to tell.

"Ironhide wants to talk to you," was Ratchet's only answer.

Bee growled.

"The girl is perfectly safe in here with me, Bumblebee"

Hmm. Bee shot one last suspicious looks across the shelter, but did eventually get up and stomp off to go find Ironhide. Charlie watched him go and then looked back to Ratchet. 

Maybe... since... Bumblebee couldn't really tell her very much about where everyone else was right now... Ratchet could be persuaded to talk to her?

Ouch, okay, Charlie needed something to stir her soup and boiling water together with. She kicked over her dying fire to smother it in the damp dearth from the night before, and stood up went to poke in her toolbox for a spare screw driver. She wiped it off on her jeans so she could at least pretend it was clean, and blended her food with it.

Death wasn't the best smell to eat soup to, but Charlie sat down next to Ratchet and his tools anyway. She still felt a lingering sense of connection to him. To the sound of an active welder, or the click of a wrench upon a bolt. To the fact that he'd been the first giant robot she'd seen in three years. 

She wanted to watch him work. No she didn't understand all the mechanical organs she was looking at, not at all, but at a glance she could at least tell where their input and output valves were, and that was a start. Right?

Not a single other person was at his side trying to help him. Even Ironhide's contribution had started and stopped at tearing up a body to set out transplants. Charlie concluded Autobots might know as little about welding up their own injuries as most humans knew about making stitches.

"Could you tell me about what everyone's been through?" she tried to open a conversation.

"I don't have time for entertaining children," Ratchet replied, predictably.

"Okay. Can you teach me how to be an Autobot mechanic?"

"I definitely don't have time for that."

"What if I streak my face in blood and wave enthusiastically to Jazz every time he pokes his head in here to freak him out?"

Ratchet paused in tightening a nut in place along his busted leg, thinking about it. He drew in a hiss through his vents and decided, "Tempting..."

To some extent, it looked like Ratchet could transform part of himself out of the way to access panels and organs behind them, and he was doing more of that than he'd been doing yesterday. Other times he still clearly needed to get through layers of metal and wire by removing everything and setting it aside.

"Ratchet... I want to work. That's how I cope with things. I work. "

"You are under no obligation to even be here, human." He set down her torque wrench and selected a pin punch. "You have nothing to cope with."

"And you're broken," she muttered, slurping poorly mixed cans of clam chowder, "and can't look after any of the other bots until you're fixed, so you should put me to work helping you."

Blue eyes widened at her so quickly she knew she must have said something wrong; then he sputtered out an indignant, "Eat your _slop_, little creature."

"Working on it." Charlie gulped down more chowder. She saw fresh purple streaks gleaming at his mouth. She steered herself. "I want you to give me a job."

This time the medic simply ignored her.

"Didn't we already have this conversation? I helped out yesterday, right?"

His body language clearly communicated that she was aggravating him.

"Oh excuse me, my bad, I guess we're not even having a conversation right now. Of course you don't need any help, what was I thinking."

Aggravated-Ratchet had a tendency to huff, scoff, and snort, even when he was supposed to be ignoring people.

Charlie squinted at him and raised her chin. Fine. He wanted to treat her like an annoying little kid? Then she'd act like a kid. The worst kid she knew, in fact: Otis.

"Please? Please please please please?" This technique seemed to work best if alternated with monotone and sing-song periods. "Pllleeeaasse please please please, why not, why not, how come, how come, why, why, why, why, why—?"

It turned out that giant humanoid robots and humans shared a lot in common. Ratchet started flinching in irritation with each syllable until, finally, when he just couldn't take it any more—!

Charlie saw the wind-up and scrambled to duck. A wrench hit the wall behind her with a BANG. 

Holy. Shit. Angry that this had now happened _twice, _Charlie stared at a now dented oven that had taken a shot meant for her _head_. She picked up Ratchet's fallen wrench, and turned to give him a piece of her mind... only to find him already leaning over her with a tightly creased and unexpectedly worried expression.

"I didn't hit you, did I?"

Some of the fight bled out of Charlie and she rocked back on her heels. "No."

Ratchet's expression slackened and his shoulders fell a little. "Good." 

Good? Charlie frowned up at this big white metal giant, trying to figure him out, unsure if she was prepared to forgive him. Yeah, anybody in his condition had the right to be frustrated. She could easily imagine he'd been getting towed around for days looking for a safe place for him to work, leaking blood the whole while. And now that he finally did have time, space, and plenty of scrap; _everything_ up to an including the weather was conspiring to slow him down. But how any of that possibly justified lashing out at her, _again,_ when she was literally only—

('Why?' Charlie had asked her mother once, on a very bad day, when everything inside had felt like poison. 'Why didn't you see the symptoms? Why didn't you save him? Why did your own husband die of a heart attack on your watch?')

Charlie's hands fell to her sides; stricken, she searched Ratchet's troubled expression.

That was who Ratchet _was_, wasn't he? Same as her mother: The life saver, the doctor, the person who was supposed to look after and take care of everyone else. And, right now, the people who'd risked their lives to save Ratchet were cut, burnt, and gouged, and he literally _couldn't_ help them, couldn't, because he had to prioritize saving himself first. Because he was the only one who _could. _And now, here was some tiny-ass alien chick, mocking his helplessness, calling him _broken, _unaware of and indifferent to however many times one of his own people had died on his watch because of another time he'd been helpless to help.

_Dick move, Charlie. _

The Autobot Medic turned his head away, maybe out of lingering frustration, or maybe to imply he was ashamed. After a moment, he lifted a hand palm up towards her, wordlessly requesting his tool back.

This time around, Charlie could recognize conflict avoidance when she saw it. 

... No way in hell was Charlie going to give this sour bastard _her _wrench back. His actions deserved _consequences. _She took a steep breath. She _climbed_ into his hand. The fingers twitched under her knees but didn't dump her on her ass or reject her. No, Ratchet glanced back her way, brought her up in front of his face, inspected her disdainfully like she was the most unnecessarily convoluted pocket knife he'd ever seen, and then lowered her to his side anyway and pointed out a set of naked motors he wanted her to remove from his person.

Charlie saluted. She slid out of his fingers and got to work. Ratchet made sure she had the task handled. Then he picked up one of the transplant organs and extended some of his delicate equipment from within his fingers to examine and manipulate it.

"Never, _ever_, do that again, by the way," he grumbled, except it sounded like an apology instead of an admonition.

"I'll save it for life or death emergencies," Charlie also apologized, and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "Like if lava is raining down on us."

"Hmph. I think I'd prefer the lava."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I present to you: The Squishy human multitool! Fit it with wrenches! Fit it with screwdrivers! This model also comes pre programmed with surprisingly fast ninja-like ducking reflexes! You can have any color you want as long as it’s a shade of brown!
> 
> Neither character is going to notice how cute it looks to have him inspecting something in his hands with a human tucked under one arm, so alas I have to do it for them. 
> 
> ... In other news: You can tell this story is set a few years back because cars still have cigarette lighters...


	15. Hey Mikey, He Likes It!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you dearly for each and every last remaining comment. MUAHAHAHAH. THEY MAKE ME MORE POWERFUL WITH EACH AND EVERY ONE!

The three of them stood at the center of the scrap yard, waiting.

Dino's arms were crossed, his posture comfortably slumped and one knee bent to hide that his leg was still bothering him. Bumblebee's attitude was poor; he looked and sounded riled up. Ironhide eyed the latter up and down out of the corner of her optics.

_Not the time,_ kid, she shook her head. _You been holding this scrap show together better than anybody thought you could._

Anyone other than Optimus, that was.

_Don't blow it now by throwin' a tantrum._

The five of them ought to have been scattered and in hiding. 'Ought to.' Except things were up in the air now, cause not one of them was leaving the others; not one of them was leaving Ratchet. Choices had to be made. This time without Optimus. Hell of a lot of slag was resting on Bumblebee's round little shoulders.

They waited on Jazz to get back to them.

Running 'cold' for stealth, EMF repressed to keep Ratchet from guessing how near he was, Jazz lingered and listened at the side of the shelter. He stayed a good fifteen minutes, as Bee paced and Dino glowered.

Ironhide decided she was going about this the wrong way; Bee was set to blow the second anyone flexed their jaw motor. She turned on him and grabbed his arm. He whirled on her with a burst of noise. She grabbed his other arm.

"Push," she said.

He shoved against her.

"Harder," she encouraged. "Fight me. C'mon_ sparkling,_ harder."

Bee threw his weight into her, volume rising, wings vibrating, kicking against the ground.

"That all you got?"

Ha! She'd finally provoked him hard enough to budge her. Feeling mud sliding under her peds, Ironhide approved.

"C'mon. Act like you're at least trying."

Bee dropped his weight, kicked into her shin plates and Ironhide let him get away with it. He pulled her off her feet and rolled her over him. She hung on, and kept rolling, and slammed him into the muck.

"_Fight_ me."

'Seemed to dawn on him she was trying to help. Minutes rolled by in the mud. Ironhide shuffled side to side, keeping her balance. Had to keep him under control so he could throw his full weight into this without doing damage.

Wasn't easy. Kid was built on a broad, squat frame, but always fought like he was one half his own form factor, like he was thin like Mirage, Sunstreaker, or Sidewipe. Slippery as an eel, too, and he fought dirty.

Dirty. Ha. She spat out mud and shoved his head down into the dirt. Had to admit, Ironhide was grinning by the time fifteen minutes was out and Jazz darted back up to them with his report.

"How the scrap did you pick up on that, IH?! If you hadn't just sent me with explicit instructions to listen for it, I'd have never noticed! Did - not - see it coming."

Ironhide 'picked up' something else: Bee. Muscled her hands in under his arms and around his chest and hauled his flailing aft up off his feet! She set him down, blocked a rush, and then cuffed his head. "Ey," she reigned him in. "Settle down. I'll wrestle you again after."

Bee growled, vents open, running hot. He didn't go off on Jazz, though. Good. Better than a real fight.

"Ratchet is instructing it in how to assist him?" Dino disbelieved.

"Exactly," Jazz replied. "Ratchet. THE Ratchet."

"Letting somebody help him," Ironhide chewed on that. Had an interesting texture.

"Ma-an, it is nu-uts," Jazz agreed. "He's got her working on the puncture wound in his fuel synthesizer. He's letting her sit on him. He's _talking _to her." Jazz mimed something blowing his mind. "Pshhw!"

Bee cooled off real fast. He looked between all three of them in surprise and curiousity, his antenna popping up. _Good._ They needed his head screwed on right when Dino back there inevitably disagreed. Right on schedule, too:

"We should be deciding what to do about the completely disastrous betrayal of the last set of humans, not soliciting aid from new ones."

Getting hunted down by some of the same men and women you'd once trained to hunt Decepticons at your side was a rough fuel to swallow. Would have to process it later, when they'd worked out what to do about their current situation.

"Hey now, Wheeljack told us Cemetery Wind isn't the military," Jazz reminded. "Some kind of mercenaries."

"Guess who must be provisioning them," Dino brushed it off. "How do we get rid of the human nicely for the Lieutenant's sake so we can regroup with Wheeljack?"

"Why would we get rid of her!?" Jazz demanded. "Chick's fresh! Did you not hear the part where even Dr. Grumpy McNags-a-Lot—"

"It is a lesser species; our biology is unfathomable to it, just like the fools who were stripping Ratchet betimes we reached him. Or have you forgotten? They assume anything metallic must be reducible to binary and molten metal."

Nobody much cared for that mental image.

Bee finally got his head together enough to send them all a message: [Charlie Watson is descended from a patrilineal lineage of auto mechanics who have been employed in the same or related disciplines for nearly a vorn, and her matrilineal carrier is a medic among her people.]

Ironhide raised a brow. She exchanged a look with Jazz.

[Charlie worked to repair me both before and after discovering I was not a normal car. The vehicle she drove here in is thirty solar cycles in age, which—as Ratchet explained when we came to this scrap yard—is much longer than it takes human vehicles to deteriorate. Restoring it was a project shared between her and her paternal creator, in which he passed on knowledge of the discipline.

[She cleaned and refueled me. She repaired my holographic projector so that I was able to access Optimus' message while my memory was damaged. She also revived me after Dropkick deactivated me.]

Everyone took a second to compute that last one there.

"After Dropkick what?" Dino asked, rounding on Bee as if he smelled a lie.

[Blasted me through the spark. Offlined me. I died.] 

"That's not something you told Optimus," Ironhide frowned.

[It was not relevant. Besides, I didn't understand the physics of how she revived me. There was little about it to report.]

Ironhide grimaced. The reason Bee hadn't debriefed anyone on something as huge as being_ executed_ might not have been obvious to anybody else, but Ironhide understood: Bee hadn't wanted Optimus to worry.

B-127 was one of the luckiest scouts they'd ever had. Probably one of the luckiest who'd ever lived. Take a mission anyone else would have died on, and he'd rocket out of the blast radius singing to himself and pop into the debriefing room with just a few scuffs, happy to see everyone.

When it came to the rare few times Bee actually toed the line and almost didn't make it, always seemed to hit Prime harder than anything else did.

Sometimes Ironhide thought back to that first day Optimus had carried in the last surviving Model B Scout from the battlefield with its leg blown off and a weirdly chipper look on its face, and thought there was some symbolism to it all, symbolism only a sentimentalist who'd once been a librarian could understand. It was like as if, somehow, as long as B-127 kept making it back, there was hope. And that if the day came where the doorway home stood empty, where this B finally joined his modelmates in the scrap heap, somehow it'd be the day Prime finally cracked.

Sure as hell had looked that way when Bee'd gone missing in the fight with Megatron half a solar cycle back, the day the war was declared officially 'over.' Prime'd looked around and realized Bee hadn't made it out with them; worked out that he must have been the one distracting Megatron in those last vital seconds. Ironhide had seen Prime's face; had felt his EMF fold in like it was gonna break open and the flood gates of his self control were crumbling and everything was going to pour out...

Except then, Primus Damn Him, B-127, that _plucky little bastard, _had started twittering somewhere nearby, and they'd gone and found him with his chassis busted open so bad his spark was showing, holding on to the outside of their ship by one remaining working hand, looking smug as a scraplet in a steel mill.

'I handled Megatron all on my own!' that dumbaft, slag-eating grin had said.

Maybe that was why Optimus had agreed to the 'rules' for staying on Earth which the humans had laid out. Maybe it had something to do with ushering in a few years of peace so that everyone had time to heal.

Well that was all a wash now, wasn't it? _Humans_ were after them.

"Whatever," Dino finally dismissed the outlandish story. "We now have vital information we need to transmit to our people long distance, and this time we do not have access to Optimus or his Matrix of Leadership, nor Blaster, nor anyone else who can project a message. We are going to need to hijack human technology and protect our wounded at the same time, and for that we do not need another liability or wild volt. This plan must be air-tight. "

Hmm. "We don't have a shared encryption code the Decepticons wouldn't know," Ironhide mused.

"So we'll broadcast it in naked Cybertronian," Dino dismissed. "Let the Decepticons hear our warning! Every Cybertronian deserves a better death then being disassembled by organics!"

[Charlie assisted me in attempting to disable the communications device which Dropkick and Shatter tried to use to hail the Decepticons,] Bee interjected. [It was at some kind of dry dock for waterborne craft and presumably military; and she could not have been familiar with the specific technology. However she knew the premise of how it worked and was able to stop the broadcast before I even reached the device.]

"And what? How can you think of incorporating that in our plans? Have we not suffered enough puny traitors!?"

"I'm for capturing a tower," Ironhide agreed. "But we don't send the girl in to do the job for us. She gets caught and gives up intel and we'll only have ourselves to blame. We need Wheeljack."

"Once we have Wheeljack," Dino argued, "we'll have a casualty and an easily distracted demolitions enthusiast to defend, and now you want to add in a human to—"

"A human who can make sense of Wheeljack's plans_ and_ babysit Ratchet?" Jazz gushed. "C'mon, Dino, it's only _one!_ Don't be so scared of them just because they're small."

"I am not scared of them! Their smallness is deceptive, it allows them to move unseen, to scuttle out of dark corners and bite dishonorably! They are repulsive and have been nothing but problems for us since we've been here."

"Diiinooooooo," Jazz sang in annoyance.

"What!? I'm not wrong: Have any of Bee's previous 'friends' stayed with us through thick and thin? Hmm!?"

"The Witwicky boy risked his species just to try and keep Optimus alive," Ironhide disputed. "You're crystal picking examples you want. And. It ain't your decision." She looked back at Bumblebee. "Girl's gonna be in a lot of danger with us. Hope you've thought that through, Lieutenant. She ain't got any idea what she's just stepped in, yet."

Bumblebee looked from her, to Jazz, to Dino, and then to the awning. His wings quivered, and his EMF changed directions.

[No,] Bumblebee messaged them, [she knows. It's why she came three thousand miles with a trunk loaded in tools and spare parts. She saw we were in danger.]

Before Dino could muster up the indignation to protest that for being romanticized, or _whatever_, the subject of their conversation surprised them by peeking out of the shelter and looking for them. She waved with a wrench. Jazz winced.

"Yikes. If she keeps doing that I'll understand why Ratchet likes her," the Porsche mumbled.

"Ratchet says you're all overdue for a checkup!" the human hollered. "And he specifically says Jazz is first!"

Jazz leaped into the air. "NO! No, I'm fine, little sister, ha-ha, uh!"

"He says you have a hole in your hood and that's why you didn't want to get wet the other-"

"I'M FINE! No, REALLY ha-ha LOOK AT ME," Jazz spun around and started dancing, "SPRY and limber, that's me, hey by the way, nice duds little mama, did you—"

"Nuh-uh-uh," the human interrupted him. "He said you'd try that, and he told me I'm to completely ignore you, give you no attention, refuse to watch you dance, never complement you, refuse to introduce you to any new music, and refrain from conversing with you on any topic at all, whether it's Cybertron or Earth pop culture, until you submit for a standard checkup; because he says you're a—what was that word?" She leaned back in the awning and then out again. "A _neophile_ and that being unable to talk to the new person will most probably kill you within the hour."

Jazz sagged, jaw drooping.

Bee was stiff a moment and then keeled over laughing, pointing and buzzing up a storm. Dino coughed and didn't say anything.

"I-I," Jazz sputtered, looking aghast back to the rest of them, "I can last more than an hour! I can totally go two hours! You watch me!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dino apparently thinks of humans the way humans think of spiders. Just one and you have to burn the whole house down....
> 
> Also now we finally know what Bee sounds like in his text messages. Which is hilariously different both from how he actually sounds and from how he presents himself with music. Ah, Bee, don't worry, we all do that to some extent ;)


	16. She's Got Wide Hips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs referenced in this chapter, for your auditory pleasure, are: 
> 
> [I Love Rock n' Roll](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC8oP4Z_xPw) by Joan Jett
> 
> and [Kung Fu Fighting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmfudW7rbG0) by Carl Douglas
> 
> Also! October Shoutouts to CMY and The Wonderfulshoe, stalwart supporters of the written word, and to all my other Tiny Turtles!

With moaning and groaning like the world was about to end, Jazz submitted himself for a 'check-up' at the thirty minute mark. If he was so much older than Bee, he sure didn't act it. He was walking so low it was a a wonder none of him was dragging on the ground.

"Ah. Right on time," Ratchet set aside the tools and gears he'd been using to rebuild his side. Plates slid temporarily back into place over his injuries.

Jazz still tried to escape: "Look I don't want to interrupt you Ratch, you're a busy mech you've got more important things to do, and I should get out of your grill and let you—"

"No need, I've explicitly designated this minute to spare, and the state of emergency has passed now that the valves to my fuel synthesizer and knee joint have finally been closed off. Come here."

Owed to the lack of normal eyes, it was nearly impossible to tell where Jazz was looking; although Charlie thought she caught a pout thrown her way as he dragged his feet. She was still getting used to the softer and more humanoid facial structure of these two bots in particular. "But—"

"Here, take this human to entertain yourself."

Ratchet grabbed Charlie up unceremoniously around the midsection and distributed her like a free sticker at the doctor's office. "Hey!" she yelped, feeling betrayed. A second later she was being rolled back upright by a very small Autobot who looked utterly delighted to have her.

"Well okay!" Jazz purred, holding her up in the air like a toy plane or flying toddler. He crashed to the ground near enough for Ratchet to get a good look at his back; Charlie felt the impact in her teeth. "Hello little lady! I'm the one—the only—Jjjeeeeeeaaazzzzz, sub-lieutenant and lover of sweet rides, sweet tunes, and sweet moves!"

Charlie seriously weighed the pros and cons of aiming a kick over Jazz's shoulder at Ratchet's face, especially when he leaned closer to evaluate Jazz's plating.

"More of a rock fan myself," she muttered.

"Is that the case?" Jazz purred slyly, before bringing both speakers on at a full, hard bass, with the highest fidelity recording of Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll Charlie had ever heard. It almost sounded like a live concert. _Might _it be a live concert? She leaned back, impressed, taking a second look at the robot who'd accosted her.

"Turn - that - down."

Oh-ho? Charlie shot Ratchet a mean grin, and then grinned even meaner at Jazz. She daringly stood in Jazz's relatively small hands. She nearly tipped over but got a foot on his shoulder for balance, "Pump it up," she disagreed. "And play it from the top."

_Waaaaaoowaaaaoooo!_ the guitar wailed. _♫ Saw him dancing there by the record machine, knew he musta been about seventeen...! ♫_

Ratchet made testy huffy noises. Charlie played air drums and guitar, and Charlie sang:

"♫ The beat was going strong, playing my favorite so-o-o-o-o-ong  
And I could tell it wouldn't be long 'til he was with me— ♫"

"♫ Yeah, me! ♫" Jazz wanted in, slapping his plates with the beat.

"♫ I could tell it wouldn't be long 'til he was with me! ♫" Charlie sang back.

"♫ Yeah me! Singing—! ♫"

Human and Autobot got Ratchet back together at the top of their lungs: "♫ I love rock and roll; So put another dime in the jukebox, baby; I love rock and roll; So come and take your time and dance with me; Ow! ♫"

Instead of getting angry, shouting, or allowing them to see how annoyed he was, Ratchet accepted his misplay with dignity and worked in silence.

To his credit, he'd probably been right: Jazz was better behaved with a distraction. He didn't twitch or flinch or make nauseous faces the entire time Ratchet was examining and patching the holes in his armor. Even when the welder was brought online, Jazz's only reaction to sparks and fire as his own injuries were soldered shut was to play a higher pitched song.

"Next patient," Ratchet ended their female rock icon marathon about five artists in.

Jazz popped up like a spring powered gun.

"And leave the human where you found her."

"What!? Awww man! Are you sure? Hey is she botherin you, because I'll totally take her." Jazz volunteered.

"I have a better question: Why would waste my time giving you instructions I don't intend for you to follow?"

"Man, Ratch, is she really that helpful, dawg? Because—"

"Yes, like any tool: Like a screwdriver, or an extension cable, or a _toy plastic truck_ I keep around to distract sparklings with; Bumblebee has provided a very 'helpful' Swiss Army knife. Call in Mirage."

Jazz gave a tremendous shrug and did as he'd been told. Sort of. Since he'd found her helping Ratchet, he plopped her down right back down on top of Ratchet. Only instead of targeting any safe surfaces like just beside him or even right on his knee, Jazz went for the shoulder. Jazz also was nowhere near as careful or sensitive to the amount of force he was using, so instead of gently positioning her like a shoulder angel (or shoulder devil), he kind of jammed her into place like a kid clumsily stuffing toys back onto a shelf: diagonal and crumpled.

She had one leg bent and the other outstretched, and the only place for her to go was down.

Charlie flailed out for anything to grab hold of. The only reason she didn't fall and break her neck right then, right there, was because she lucked out and caught one of Ratchet's horns and the edge of his nose.

Oh-! Oh, yikes okay, yup, his skin was definitely like silicone, soft and taut with just a bit of a squish to it, like hot gel packs on a muscle strain. It also had absolutely zero purchase, and her opposite hand was slipping on the metal of his horn, so she crossed her arms and managed to snag the edge of one of his helmet vents instead. Phew!

"We'll hang later, hot stuff, got plenty more tunes to share!" Jazz called, very clearly seeing nothing amiss, as he fled the shelter.

Grunting and huffing, Charlie managed to get her knee up over Ratchet's shoulder, and began pulling her pelvis and center of gravity over more than empty air. Ratchet's curled forefinger nudged her up the last foot or so, maybe just to stop her from hanging on him. She clung for dear life. 

"You_ jerk-wipe_," she wheezed, "you handed me over to a giant metal man baby who doesn't know that humans break if you drop them."

Ratchet gave a dark chuckle. He was already busy selecting parts he suspected his next patient would need. "If you cannot suffer fools, you have no business in this profession."

Charlie rolled her eyes, still trying to catch her breath, "I've known you less than twenty-four hours, Ratchet, and you know what I've learned so far?" She turned about, still holding on to his cheek vent for balance, "You're a short-fused, bad-tempered, sour-faced old goat whom everyone but Ironhide is mildly afraid of and who backs it all up by lobbing random handheld objects at people when peeved."

Blue eyes gleamed in her direction like that description had just been the highlight of his week. He sounded amused, but the words that actually came out of him were pretty solemn: "That was a mistake I will not repeat. You have my apologies for resorting to it twice."

"Yeah. Well. You remind me of _other mechanics._"

"Hn." 

Charlie situated herself up on this high vantage point. It was extremely weird to be so _small_ that someone's cheek could brush against you whenever their head turned. She felt like somebody's parrot. "It looked like your head was somewhere dark," she finally mentioned. "I was making it worse."

He didn't say anything to that, though his eyelids creased a little. So she didn't press the topic. 

...It was kinda _neat_ being someone's parrot.

Oh! She remembered who Ratchet said was next in the patient line up: "Mirage dislikes humans." It was all she presently knew about him. "Is it better for me to sit out the next round so he isn't distracted?"

"Mn." Ratchet tilted his head and eased his fingers under her to peel her away from his neck. Now that she had a basis of comparison she could tell how conscientious he was about not squishing, compressing, or throwing her around. He leaned over and set her gently down on solid ground and gestured she should go. No further instructions were given, but Charlie planned to only sit out a single 'checkup.' Whatever was wrong with the Autobots, whatever their injuries or weak scales were right now, she planned to be informed. And she fully, fully, fully intended to remain useful, as a Swiss Army knife or otherwise.

If being able to help Bee meant bothering and pestering and nagging and tagging along after this outwardly rude but deceptively gentle older 'bot, then that was the way forward for her.

That was going to be her life now.

That was what she wanted.

* * *

Immediately after that intense internal vocational affirmation, the universe had another mood swing:

Charlie found herself standing with her hands on her hips, watching a bunch of 'fools' having a robot mud derby. Ironhide and Bumblebee had clearly been at it for awhile; they were filthy from helm to toe, splattered rusty filth, dripping clods of grass and globs of mud, covered in it like an inch of discolored chocolate frosting.

Jazz had dived clear into the fray, and slammed into Ironhide's side at the same exactly time Bee rolled his weight. With their powers combined they took the bigger bot out, dropping her into the mud that splashed feet into the air as they swarmed and grappled with and attempt to secure her in some kind of headlock.

"Whoa-ho!" Ironhide roared, but there was no anger in whatever was going on here. She was laughing. Jazz was laughing. Bee started playing, "Everybody was Kung-Fu Fi-ighting!" They wrestled and tossed in the mud, Ironhide at one point throwing Jazz a solid six feet into the air only for him to land safely and dive back into the fray.

"Waste of fuel," <strike>Dino</strike> Mirage commented, and Charlie looked up to see the hard-faced blue Autobot approaching her. "Ironhide has already sided with da Lieutenant, and since that is where the true power of this farcical chain of command lies," he sneered, "further dispute is irrelevant. As the lone voice of dissent, I should warn you: If you stray one time, if you side with the humans even once over us, I will terminate you without hesitatin'."

Charlie stared up at yellow eyes, brows raised, because how the heck was anyone supposed to respond to that? "Thanks for keeping the mood upbeat." 

"Mood?" His golden eyes narrowed. "Dis is not a time for upbeat moods." He gestured angrily. "We're scattered. Our planet lies in decay. The future of our people is dead and buried—all for the sake of your puny kind. And out of gratitude for our ultimate sacrifice... you have begun huntin' down and extinguishin' us, like we're vermin."

Charlie was put on the spot by a quick summary of a situation that was bigger and worse than she'd previously understood.

The death of a planet? Of a people? Local news had focused more on the scary robot thing and less on the intricate politics of whatever the hell these aliens had really come here for.

But she could also tell Dino was using this kind of information dump as a weapon to intimidate her, and that the only reason he thought it would work was because she her strongest point of connection with the team was a mute, and her newest acquaintances were some kind of smooth lovable idiot, and taciturn grouch, respectively. But give it two or three days and _somebody_ would eventually start explaining all this stuff to her.

So she only looked back towards the mud wrestle and answered, "That's why I came here. To help out."

"Ha. Then you aren't afraid," the waspish blue robot concluded. "Me saying you could die or put your entire family in danger means nothin' to you, then; as alien a concept as Calculus to a sparklin', you've no frame of reference for mortality." His contempt was thick. "Queer for such a fragile, short-lived species, but then I realize that makes for few memorable experiences to draw from. You've never much lost anythin', have you?"

"You know what, Dino? You keep pitching and you keep missing," Charlie said without looking up at him, steeling herself. "Assuming Jazz didn't mention it before he jumped in on that derby over there, Ratchet called you in next. Go get your ankle fixed before you trip."

_Dino_ bristled, plates and blades shifting like a wave. Then he said, "You should know you are in danger with us and, at best, a surrogate. There've been others; other temporary replacements like yourself. The human company he actually misses is in California."

Charlie raised her brows. "California?" Had Dino not read her license plate?

"The Witwicky boy," Dino said, walking proudly past her. "Or at least, that's who he tried to retire himself with, before being _discarded_ like an old appliance."

_Wait wait wait wait. What?_ Charlie knew high school level drama when she heard it, and Dino's rumor mill wasn't going to work on her. She'd just out and ask Bee, and if she somehow felt jealous afterwards, whatever, it was a normal emotion to go through. It wasn't like a person only had room for a single friend. Even Charlie had two.

'Course, she now regretted the thirty plus months she'd tuned out news stations, because all the names and places hadn't stuck. She knew some of the people who'd helped the Autobots had basically been conscripted by the feds afterwards. Some were in witness protection programs. Others had simply been killed in action, crushed to death by the very aliens they'd been trying to help. 

Charlie would just have to catch up on all that.

And, um, ask if Dino really was someone she needed to be _afraid _of. Ratchet had also threatened her life if she turned out to be a 'bad' human, after all, but the way this blue hornet was trying to get under her skin made her wonder what he or anyone else might be capable of if the wrong buttons got pushed. 

Later, though. She'd worry about all that later. After watching big broad macho Ironhide swagger around holding each of two 'boys' in each of two headlocks at her sides, grinning smugly to herself as they tried to escape her hips and arms.

"Mmmhhph-nnppph!"

"What's that Jazz?" The big lady rumbled as she smothered him. "I can't hear ya, speak up!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mirage, Dino, whatever your name is, she just faced down Ratchet. She's already acid tested. You can't get to her; she knows no fear; her reaction to 'there's a giant alien robot in my garage' was 'you're the cutest little bumblebee I've ever seen, can i please touch you.'
> 
> Bearings of steel.


	17. Robot Showers Bring...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... May Flowers?

Charlie picked around the scrap yard for the better part of half an hour, listening to mud fighting, fight music, and comedic sound effects from Saturday Morning Cartoon and The Three Stooges.

She knew Ratchet was making use of her welder firstly because the thing was old and loud and secondly because sparks of light could be seen illuminating the walls. This shelter was not a sealed unit and she once more had reason to be grateful Ratchet had been boosted off of ground level the night before.

Charlie was looking for something specific she wagered ought to be within throwing distance of such a shelter, especially one with a water spicket plainly available on the inside.

Aha!

She found a spiral of green hose poking out from underneath a piece of wood. On freeing it, she found not only a couple dozen meters of garden hose, but also several spray gun heads that could be screwed on the far end. She tested the one presently on the hose, but it had rusted solid a long time ago. There was a plastic spare; but first she'd have to separate the rested end from the hose.

Charlie headed back around to the front of the shelter. She dared to poke her head in, and knocked on an oven. Dino was still in leg surgery but the welding phase was over. Ratchet didn't look up at her, focused as he was on some kind of detailed wiring.

"Just borrowing a can of WD-40," she explained, and then tried to fetch it as unobtrusively as possible without looking at either larger robot. Dino clearly needed some kind of space. There was the can, okay, and there was the little plastic nozzle.

With the rust killer thus applied, Charlie grabbed the spray head in one glove and the neck of the hose in the other and twisted. Mmmmmmmnnn-mph! It came free with a shriek and a dusting of rust. She left the WD-40, walked over to pitch the rusted spray gun out the front, and then returned to that water line Bee'd found the day before.

Water spicket, check. Garden hose, check. Spray gun, check. Everything connected, check. Now the moment of truth where she found out if the hose had a thousand holes in it or not...?

Ratchet lifted his voice to make it clear he wasn't talking to Dino: "Tell Ironhide I am almost done, and that, yes, I know she suffered no serious injuries, but she is to submit herself regardless."

"Way ahead of you, sir," Charlie replied, testing the water pressure by squirting the gun on her hand. Solid. She gathered up most of the hose on her shoulder, got to her feet and headed out of the shelter. From there she walked up to the mud fight or training session or play time or whatever this was, aimed the gun, and sprayed herself some Autobots.

"Alright, break it up people, break it up," she pretended to be serious as she sprays one, then the next, then all of them. "Ratchet wants Ironhide."

Bee squealed in delight at the sight of her, picked up a handful of mud, and—" Charlie ducked and enough mud to cream a person went flying over her head like a very, very large snowball.

"Bee!" she shouted at him anyway, because ducking that hard had required falling in the mud and now she was dirty anyway. "I only have so much clothing and none of these clothes washers work!"

"Ooop-wooo," he shrank and tapped his pointer fingers together apologetically. She playfully blasted him back with water, and he started giggling.

"Hnh," Ironhide propped herself up from where she'd been recieving some payback for her premature mid game victory swagger. Big wads of mud and clouds of grass were falling off of her, and plenty looked partially wedged between her plates. "I didn't take no parting hits what even broke my plating."

"He knows." Charlie shrugged dramatically so they could all see it, and then aimed her hose at Ironhide and squirted her. "I'm just the messenger. Need some help?"

"Allrighht, Yeaah-haa!" cooed a Jazz who was now gleeful to be wet since his armor had been patched, and he leaped straight into the stream of water and started hopping and twisting about to get mud off himself. "Woo! That's right honey, get in all my cracks and crevasse-"

"Bzzwwwu-uuu!?"

Ironhide wrinkled her heavy brow Jazz like he was a nincompoop. Her expression suggested she knew full well why Charlie was offering her a hose down right before having to wade in and confront Ratchet's potentially disappointed glower. And when Jazz didn't pick up on it, Ironhide rolled her eyes, smirked, grabbed one of Jazz's legs and lobbed him out of the way so hard he didn't manage to play off the strike. He splattered face first half a foot deep in mud.

"Hhhh-hhheeennnyyyy!" he whined as Bee hopped over to hiss and buzz at him.

That left Ironhide unmolested to wade out of the mud and present herself to Charlie, moving around in a slow circle and sloughing off big gobs of mud with her hands. Many of her various plates appeared to be able to move to help get water in and mud out. 

"Good enough?" the big lady asked, as Jazz and Bee continued to fight in the background by picking up random objects and appliances to hit each other with.

"I mean, for a truck," Charlie agreed. "You have to look a little rugged with that kind of outfit."

That earned her a gruff chortle, kinda like an unspoken 'you ain't bad, kid,' and then the Autobot headed past to go find Ratchet.

Charlie watched her go, and then squinted at where two smaller bots had apparently stopped punching one another long enough to realize a certain piece of scrap could be used as a ball. Jazz was balancing it on one foot and jumped to catch it on the other. Then he jumped again, did a ridiculous flip and kick, and the ball went sailing for Bee, who dove to catch it and landed with a splatter, tearing up clods of earth.

These two clowns deserved each other. Charlie grinned, but, well, Ratchet hadn't acted like he'd expected Ironhide to take very long. She'd have to interrupt them if the team's final patient was going to get cleaned up in time for his appointment.

"Bee, get over here so I can hose you down!"

"Zztt-zzt?" Bee tried, but he got hit by a buoy ball in the head.

"Jazz!" Charlie scowled.

"Whaaaaaaat?"

Bee complained at him and threw the ball back.

"Bee," Charlie warned.

Bee squeaked and tried to get to her.

BAM, hit by a ball from Jazz again. Right in the face!

"Su-u-uckeeer!" Jazz cheered. "Three points! You just ate my—!"

"No he didn't!" Charlie interrupted loudly. "That's it, you are in time out," she told Jazz. "Yes, that's what I said. Time. Out. Mister. Don't make me throw a wrench at you; I've been informally deputized in that capacity by the Chief Medical Wrench Lobber."

"Zzz?!" 

"Wh-what!?" Jazz sputtered, puffing himself up. "You can't put me in time out, what do I look like to you, missy, I'm a celebrated war hero, famous on the home world and three colonies, from Velocitron to—"

"Time out. Go." She pointed away from them like her mother had once pointed to the kitchen corner. "Ten minutes, until you can behave yourself."

Jazz gaped from her to Bee, who—Charlie had almost forgotten!—was allegedly the group leader.

Bee stood up every one of his inches (which were probably only twelve more than Jazz's) and crossed his arms imperiously.

A brief stand off occurred.

"Mmmmaaann!" Jazz stomped and threw up his arms. "I can't BELIEVE this! Putting me in (mumble mutter) time out like I'm a (mumble mumble)..." He transformed back into a car as he went to go hide and pout someplace where they couldn't see his shame, and Charlie tried not to think about whether this meant the entire interior upholstery of the Porsche was now slick with mud and how gross that would be to try and sit on.

Bee waited until he was gone and then bent double and slapped his knee, pointing and laughing with buzzing noises.

"Bum-ble-bee," she called yoohoo, and waved the water gun.

He squeaked and quickly waded through the mud up to her, with his arms comically out to the side for balance. When he arrived, he squatted down with his little hands together like he always did when he was scared he'd done something wrong. Every part of him was dripping mud. His whole face was splattered in it, and there were streaks on the glass of his eyes. He didn't seem to see the cause and effect here like Ironhide had: Mud would make it difficult for Ratchet to do a medical exam. Charlie decided to put the issue of cleanliness in terms he might care about more:

"Quick question. How clean is your 'back seat' going to be if you transform right now?"

Bee thought about it and his antenna shrank down as he warbled an 'ooohhh nooooo.' He looked down and quickly started sloughing off mud from himself, but he was so close to her he accidentally sprayed her with big flecks of it. Then he squeaked and reached out to try and rub the mud off her, but of course only rubbed on more.

"Bee! Bee!" she sputtered and laughed, fighting off his well-meaning hands.

"Bloop-oooop..." he cried upon realizing that nothing he could do could fix the situation, and that he'd only made it worse.

Charlie looked down at herself covered in mud, some of it on her cheek, some of it in her hair, tons on her pants, and across the whole left side of her shirt. _You know what? Why not? _She looked back up at Bumblebee, grinned, and then stepped forward and threw her arms around his messy, sloppy, mud-covered self. He cooed, turning big apologetic blue eyes down to her on his shoulder.

"You're hopeless, Bee," she teased softly. "You know that, right?"

He gave a big dramatic sigh and then gingerly hugged her into the filthiness of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing to see here, just hosing down my cars. My giant robot cars. Standard summer day right here. Are you telling me you've never had to hose down your handsome F350 after a good mud derby? Pssh. Femme can totally be handsome.


	18. ... Human Showers?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, there's mud everywhere.

"I need to improvise," Charlie explained as she first washed her hands off with the hose, and then scrabbled for some clean clothing out of the car.

"Wuuuu..."

"It's okay, Bee! But unlike you I can't run around for days in a coating of mud. See any shipping palettes?"

Bee made apologetic warbles, but walked the scrap yard close behind her and found what she was looking for before she did. He turned to show her a wooden palette, not too rotted and no nails sticking out.

"Great! Put it down, right..." she looked around, "right there," she gestured near a rack of parts.

Bee was happy to oblige, up until she turned him around and pushed him a few feet away. "Bzzu? Uuu-uu?"

"Okay, stand guard and don't look," Charlie instructed as she returned to her palette, stood on her toes, and lodge the hose and spray head high up on rack, with it's nozzle pointed downward. Bam, instant shower head. Give her some coconuts and palm leaves and she'd be the Professor on Gilligan's Isle. 

"Wwee-oo...?"

"I'm serious, Bee," Charlie called back to him. She depressing the plastic trigger for the sprayhead and flicked a little metal band up to lock it's setting and keep it spraying water. _Perfect. _

"Bbzz-bzz!"

Charlie stepped out of her shoes, one at a time, and onto the palette. She ducked under the water. "God, that's cold," she hissed to herself, but when she heard muddy armor plates moving against each other she shouted, "No looking, Bee! Remember?"

"Eeep!" He jumped back to being a perfect obedient guardian statue.

She glared over her shoulder, still trying to get as much of this mud off her clothing while it was still on her body. Could she find some place to dry it around here? Probably? It'd be a little discolored, but mostly clean.

Charlie grabbed her shirt and pulled it off over her head. Everything had to go. Bra, pants, undies, ugh, socks, yuck. She washed herself and her hair as best she could.

* * *

Okay. Bee couldn't help it.

He looked.

It wasn't his fault, he was_ dying_ of curiosity. Neither he nor anyone else (except maybe Ratchet?) knew exactly what humans looked like under their clothing—they were always so secretive about it! And it was like all - the - time, and they made funny excuses if you tried to ask about whatever was underneath! You just couldn't catch them out of their clothing, no matter when you looked. Which seemed bizarre, because their clothing wasn't even consistent about what it covered!

In fact, humans acted like that the whole game of hiding, wearing, and changing clothing _wasn't_ strange, like they only ever wore one outfit and it was part of them and just mysteriously transformed from style to style every day without wheels or gears or sub-spaces. Except _obviously_ that wasn't the case! Humans had stores filled with clothing, rooms filled with clothing, boxes filled with clothing—they had more clothing than they could ever need! They could spend whole days shopping for new clothing!

Okay, so... Bee understood the premise behind clothing, sure. It helped them thermoregulate, it protected their delicate skin, and—on top of that!—it allowed them to display different moods and a personal style, which was why there was so much of it. That made perfect sense. If Bee could change his armor as easily as humans could change shirts, he'd probably wear a quintillion different looks. Maybe? Sure!

That didn't explain why the elusive clothing-changing _process_ was such a secret! As far as Bee was aware (and if he, Bulkhead, or Arcee weren't experts by now, then _no one_ was) humans only ever changed their clothing in their bedrooms, or in tiny waste disposal and personal hygiene rooms, and they always, always, always changed it behind closed doors. Which, frankly, meant that Bee's entire knowledge about the clothing changing matter started and stopped at Charlie losing Memo's shirt one time.

Which seemed crazy! Nothing was so exciting about what was underneath, right? On the rare chance you saw a human with no shirt on, it was exactly the same as both arms and both legs, just a little bigger, with hair at the joints or sometimes all over the front and back, and a couple dots on it! What was so scandalous about that that it needed to be guarded with such secrecy at every other time? It didn't make sense! Yet that's what humans acted like: Like losing clothing was 'scandalous!'

And you know what? It must have been! Slowly the Autobots had come to the conclusion humans must have found it _taboo_ to change clothing in front of strangers. There were hints on the TV programs Bee'd overseen to support that theory. Heck, humans had elaborate grooming rituals and they barely even did those in front of strangers! They always hid it in their little hygiene rooms, with the doors closed, with their loud blowing air appliances, and bags of face paints, and assorted brushes; and Bee and everyone else had no idea why. He'd seen Charlie brush her teeth once, and nothing about it felt so exciting it had to hide behind a door. It just sort of felt queer her biology hadn't engineered her with self-cleaning dentae. 

So yes. Bee looked.

He looked despite his own better judgement telling him that he shouldn't spy on a friend, even if her clothing-changing and/or grooming taboo was completely silly, because that taboo must have made perfect sense to her and he ought to respect it. But, of course, what did he see when he looked?

Nothing. Exciting.

Exactly as he suspected, there was skin, skin, skin and more skin, and absolutely no reason in sight to cover any of it.

There were more curves than the arms or legs, yes. There was a little bit of hair at the joints, which looked like it had been cut close to the skin recently because it was all an even length. It was sparse, though, not like head hair. And Bee knew a thing or two about hair after seeing just how many different ways Sam's girlfriend could make hers behave!

Hair—especially long hair—was another thing Cybertronians had no equivalent of. There was nothing they had about their bodies which was soft and pliable like that, where if you heated or curled it or applied chemicals to it, could take on all sorts of crazy different shapes each and every day. He didn't quite understand why male humans cut their hair so short or didn't put the same effort into styling it, but Ratchet had said it might be a sexually dimorphic behavior whereby female hair served the additional function of being used to attract a mate. Bee simply had to suppose that joint hair was similarly groomed in accordance with these unknown attractiveness principles.

_So what was the secret part of all this? _Bee wondered._ Is it, like, specifically the clothingless body? Or the act of pulling clothing on and off? Is it just some strange ancient custom to find that impolite if other people see it? Like you're insulting the other person or something?_

_Wait._

Those were _contusions_. Bee recognized them: Whenever humans got injured, if the injury didn't break the skin, they'd swell up funny colors at the site of the impact. Purple, blue, red, brown; any color vaguely blood-like seemed fair game. And Charlie had one, small deep bruise between her shoulder blades, and several others along her ribs that almost looked like they'd been made by...

_...fingers._

Bumblebee wasn't mad at Ratchet anymore. He wasn't. Charlie was right; Ratchet had been cornered and maimed by humans just days ago, humans from whose hands Bee and the others had only barely arrived in time to save him. Ratchet ought to have _shot_ a human wandering alone into the shelter. So Bee wasn't mad. Wasn't.

Yet somehow, an unknown amount of seconds later, Bee caught himself three steps into creeping, servos outstretched, toward the tiny human who'd told him not to even look at her, who'd told him to 'stand watch,' who had a species-wide secret taboo about some part of this whole thing which Bee ought to have respected better.

_Slag! _He stopped his fingers just a pedspan from her back, and clenched his shaking servos tightly. _C'mon Bee. Pretend you didn't see. You can ask later. _He couldn't let Charlie down like this; she might get mad at him for not respecting her peoples' traditions, and—

—Charlie turned around suddenly and found him there, hunched over her.

_Ohhhhhhh scrap, Primus offline me. _

She screamed in surprise and alarm, stumbling backwards and tripping as her toes slipped between the palette slats.

Bee had been shrinking back red-handed, but saw her ankle slip, catch against the palette slats, and remained trapped. He saw her fall. He lunged forward to catch her.

"B-Bee!" she sputtered against the water.

He glared at the hose and shouldered into it to keep it temporarily off of her. Then he remembered he was still muddy, because as soon as the water hit him, he was trickling muddy water all over her. Primus, he just could not win right now, he was doing everything wrong.

_Charlie? What are you-?_ She was looking at her trapped leg and pulling it gingerly free. _Did you hurt yourself? Pits, it's my fault._ He tried to touch her ankle, to see it for himself, but she put it back down and said, "It's fine. Landed on the board under it, didn't hit the ground."

The ground, with its glass and metal and nails and other things human skin needed shoes and clothing to stay protected from, _and I am so off my game right now. Really not impressing myself—__Huh?_ Bee's antenna perked up, because Charlie was a little different from the shirtless humans he'd seen at the beach: She had two rounded curves draping from her shoulder joint that turned in towards the center of her chest . Bee could recall lots of humans had a 'bump' or 'mound' in this area, and he'd roughly put together that they were a female thing, but he'd never paid enough attention to know whether they were made with clothing or if females and males were physically different from one another.

"I'm okay," Charlie was saying to him, which ought to have been reassuring, "I'm okay, you just crept up on me and I didn't hear a—Bee. Bee, seriously? I get that enough from humans," she crossed her arms over her chest, which squeezed the curves together. He was surprised by how squishy they were. Humans weren't exactly hard, but when compared against the rest of her, these were extra— "C'mon Bee, eyes up here."

He blinked and looked at her face, tilting his head. She sounded calm. Would she maybe... ...maybe explain to him why...?

_(Stupid stupid stupid, she just got here, she just left her home and everything behind to come all this way; she was happy to see me and helped Ratch out, and the last thing I ought to have done was intrude on something so easy to misunderstand which isn't from my home culture, and everyone is always telling me I'm too curious for my own good, and I am so so so so so so sorry, and so stupid, and...)_

Charlie gave a heavy sigh.

He dared to perk up a little bit, hoping this meant he was about to be forgiven (or even better, that he might be given the full story about why humans were so fantastically weird about this whole thing)!

"Bee," she cleared her throat, arms still crossed over her chest, "is there any part of a robot's body that's... private?" He lifted his antenna. "You know, that maybe other people shouldn't touch? Generally speaking?

Generally speaking, Bee's antenna were delicate, and the soft polymer of Jazz's face was delicate, and it was extremely mean for Jazz to grab Bee's antenna in a scuffle (which Jazz did anyway) or for Bee to grab Jazz by the face to throw him across the yard (which Bee did anyway, woops, tables are turned!)

"Shouldn't touch?" he echoed her.

"Yeah, like... anything other people aren't usually supposed to have access to."

At first Bee was drawing blanks, his head welding together dumb answers like, 'uh, all my internal parts?' He was getting fixated on her 'bruises' again.

Then implications of what she was trying to say slowly dawned on him: That even _he_ wasn't supposed to have access to some part of her, or to her nakedness. Bumblebee looked back up at her face, confused about what that meant. The way she was protecting her chest from him caught his eye... and then, out of nowhere, the possible significance of such a gesture suddenly it hit him like a plasma bolt: His confusion and mundane insecurities fell away as he thought about what lay in the center of his own chassis: His spark.

_Holy scrap. _Bumblebee did actually know about parts of a mech's body which were 'private.' Problem was, he didn't know any of the specifics! He'd heard, for instance, that they were ports into the spark, which sort of implied they'd be in the chassis; but if that was the case Bee had no idea how to expose them. They'd be shut for a reason: The spark was you, it was your soul, so it had to be kept protected. 

Bee had also heard that these were _sensory_ ports, which would mean an input was meant to be shared between two mechs, but why anyone would ever want to let somebody apply sensory information specifically to the spark instead of filtering it through any type of useful system, Bee had no idea. The idea of tactile sensation, of touch on something so sacred, creeped him out.

And as for anything worse than just _touch_...?

Bumblebee pressed a hand slowly, instinctively against the part of his chest plate that was still healing.

(...bleeding out under Megatron, his chassis cracked open and leaking, his spark exposed as the mortally injured but much larger Decepticon tried to tear him open, to crush the life out of him with just the force of—_Stop stop stop stop, don't think about any of that, not any of it—!)_

Bumblebee shuddered, right down to the tips of his doors._ I get it, Charlie._ He bobbed his head, hoping she'd understand. _I'm sorry. _He closed his fingers around her arms, shielding her, praying that Jazz didn't suddenly come looking for them, and that absolutely no one else saw her in this vulnerable state unless (for reasons Bee wouldn't understand but vaguely registered were possible) she wanted them to.

Private meant private. From everybody. It didn't matter that humans didn't have sparks. If something felt as sacred to them as a spark, then they got to decide that. Not Cybertronians.

Bee looked back to the palette and then stood Charlie upright on her feet again, being real careful not to be hasty just because he'd upset himself.

Charlie's face softened from discomfort to admiration, and Bee maybe became a little emotional at the realization he'd been forgiven, and that even though she was still naked and still vulnerable and didn't have the cultural protection of her clothing, she didn't feel 'accessed.'

"It's okay," she said. "Bee, I knew you didn't understand. I'm not mad. Well, sort of, I did tell you—repeatedly—to look away."

Bee looked away now, venting his frustration with himself.

"Bumblebee? We're okay. You and me, we're okay. Just, um, don't let anyone else sneak up on me while I finish, okay?"

He bobbed his head rapidly and got to his feet. Where was Jazz? Primus, there was Dino, not twenty pedes back with a suspicious expression embedded in an electromagnetic field which Bee'd been drowning out with his own. _Uh! Quick! Say something! Protect her!_

'She's cleaning herself,' Bee messaged smartly.

Dino was disgusted and wanted nothing to do with that. He turned away almost immediately. Woopie! Success! Now where was Jazz? Hmmmmmm...

'I know you are creeping up on me,' Bumblebee broadcasted confidently. 'And you need to stop. Charlie says no one is allowed to look until she is dressed,'

A "Dammit!" answered him from frighteningly nearby.

Bee glared and stalked over to deal with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, relationships normality restored!
> 
> Apparently Interface-Ed wasn't one of the courses all these young mechs came online with during the war! Who'd have guessed? It's almost like there was some kind of evil Function-Obsessed bureaucracy in place who only thought soldiers needed to know how to fight and take orders or something.
> 
> Ironhide: Trying to drink her energon rations.  
Kup: Trying to drink his energon rations.  
HotRod: "Kup, what are these ports for?"  
Kup: Loses energon out his nose, starts coughing and choking, looks at (an indecently exposed) HotRod in horror.  
Ironhide: Leaps to her feet and tags Kup. "Not it!" <-- Swiftly Escapes!  
HotRod: "Did... I say something wrong?"  
Kup: Drops his face in his hands and groans, "No no, youngin, just give me a moment to think 'why me' repeatedly and curse at Primus..."  
HotRod: "Are they bad, do they mean I have Scraplets, they mean I'm going to die, don't they—"  
Kup: Cries silently.


	19. MMS101: Native Transplants, 4 Credits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to put it out there that sentio metallico is sooooo not how you do Latin.

"Oh yes, by all means, all of you just roll yourself in a thick coating of recycled organic waste and debris right before a thorough systems check-up," Ratchet verbally applauded. "By the timing I must suppose you specifically wish to aggravate me. Any particular reason why, or is this your usual—"

"Give him a break, Ratch," Ironhide had to hunker down to fix in this shelter, but didn't look inclined to move any time soon. "Was my idea."

"You don't say? That makes it so - much - better," Ratchet delivered, high and airy, which of course meant doom was coming. "I feel completely reassured now. After all it's not like he was nearly smelted half a solar cycle past, not like he's recovering from any major damage, or has gone the vast majority of that recovery period alone, in hiding, with no one supervising his progress. Might as well just skip this physical all together."

Bee tried to pretend he didn't know that was sarcasm, turned around to let himself out, and—sure enough—a wrench whipped out of the far end of the room and ricocheted off his helmet.

"BOLT HEAD."

"Uaahhzzz!" Bee whined while clutching his head .

"I've known him for less than twenty-four hours." Charlie was squeezing water out of her hair. "And even I saw that coming."

"Bwwwwwwuuu..."

Charlie released her hair, shook out the hose she was dragging along with her, and then sprayed Bee down one final time to try and make him at least a little more palatable to the house prima dona. 

Bee cheered up and twisted left and right and ducked his head under the stream, warbling slightly. He looked at himself and seemed to like how much more yellow and black he could see. Charlie smirked and turned the water gun upside down to try and get it up in all the cracks of his plating. He shuddered, letting off a little mist, and he seemed to take some pride in his appearance, because his antenna flipped up and he preened by classily brushing off some hardened clods

Charlie started snickering. "Who's a pretty car?" she teased like he was a puppy. Bee threw her for a loop by going along with it, buzzing back in the same baby-talk tone of voice for _I'm a pretty car...!_

"Enough enough enough," Ratchet muttered, waving Bumblebee close, "no need to put any more water in the atmosphere than there already is. Pick up that wrench while you're at it—I needed that."

Bee found the wrench as Charlie turned off the water spicket. She turned around to see him eyeballing it. His eyelids and nasal ridge creased mischievously. He tossed the wrench in the air, and then spun around and stood all in one motion, flinging the wrench like it was some kind of knife. It cut the air with a whistle:

ShhhhVVVV-Ting!

Ratchet had snatched it clean out of the air. Like some kind of martial arts film out of Hong Kong. Charlie's brows flew up again.

"Thank you." Ratchet smiled aggressively, with all his teeth.

Bee squeaked and tucked his arms and ducked his head like a mouse cornered by a cat. He bashfully looked all about himself and then tiptoed obediently forward to find a place to sit in reach, and was the perfect little patient, and all the while Ironhide just busted out roaring with the deepest sort of belly laughter.

* * *

Bumblebee had sat surprisingly close, to the point where his knees were right up against Ratchet's and the medic could lean over him, hold him steady, and closely inspect the sides of his head and neck.

For the most part, Ratchet appeared to be relying on eyesight and touch, but there were several devices rotating in and out of his forearm which Charlie had to guess were some kind of diagnostic equipment, like the equipment you'd see in general doctor's office, the otoscopes and stethoscopes and what-have-you. Ironhide had quieted down, instead giving Bee a fond 'yes you definitely better behave for him after that stunt' sort of expression.

"Is Bumblebee injured?" Charlie asked, looking between the two older 'bots in the room. Since she'd first arrived in this scrap yard, she'd only overheard bits and pieces of what had brought them all here today, and Bee couldn't exactly tell her stories. "What happened half a solar cycle ago?"

"Was the battle for Earth," Ironhide answered. "B-127 here, mistook himself for some kind of hero. Went toe-to-toe with Megatron to keep him away from a weapons panel so the Wreckers could take out the engines and Optimus could finish the job."

'B-127' waved a hand and buzzed something. He must have composed a flippant radio message at the same time because both other bots glared at him:

"Don't matter a whit he was busted up before you got there," Ironhide growled, whirling on Bee and shoving at his head. "You ain't his size, you ain't a flier, you ain't got his combat model, his systems, his parts, his_ octogintavorn_ of experience in the arena, his military service—"

Bee kept making noise and swayed back and forward, like he was singing about having survived it all anyway. Ironhide pulled an arm back like she was going to backhand some sense into him. Bee squeaked and covered himself with his arms.

"Enough," Ratchet interrupted. "Charlie Watson."

Was this the first time any of them had said her name? Charlie hurried up to them. "Present?"

Ironhide nudged Charlie ever so gently. "You with us now, kid?"

"Yeah." The Autobots deserved a very clear confirmation out of her. They'd been through too much already. "I mean, Dino keeps trying to scare me off, but he also said basically everyone else is fine having me here; so if that's true, then I'm sticking with Bee. That's okay? I don't misunderstand?"

"Heh." Ironhide moved to stand. "Then there'll be time for war stories later. Ratch wants you to pay attention, and I keep interrupting."

Ha! Ratchet neither confirmed nor denied that this was the case, but Ironhide had already given the game away, so Charlie clambered up onto his seat-of-tires and then up onto his knee. That got her scooped gently up into a white and red palm (with Bee's eyes narrowing on her like he was monitoring Ratchet), and boosted gently up onto the medic's own shoulder. Charlie was once more a parrot.

"This plating here," the medic directed her attention to Bee's chest-plate, and his voice had waxed on to full lecture so suddenly, it was almost like a 'play' button had been hit midway through a paused educational VCR, "is a _patch._ Can you tell?"

"The color isn't an exact match," Charlie observed, one hand reflexively finding the edge of Ratchet's cheek plate to hang on to. "Is that rust?" 

"Excellent. Living metal doesn't rust as long as it has a proper fuel line. Our, mnnn, 'immune system' counteracts it." Bee's eyes widened at 'rust.' He glanced briefly down at himself and then leaned closer to Ratchet, keeping his chin up so the medic could see better. "One of many considerations when deciding whether to treat an injury with inferior native materials."

"It _is _rust then. Is this going to be weaker than the rest of him for_ forever?"_

"No," the medic scoffed, thumbing over rust bubbles to gently abraid the paint. "Native materials eventually integrate, given time, energy, and consistent exposure to a healthy spark. But it does need to be kept tidy. Any... 'necrosis' should be identified early on and removed. Hmm, that is a low frequency vocabulary term... Do you understand what I mean by that?"

"'Dead decaying tissue?'" Charlie asked slowly. 

"Correct. And on this humid planet," Ratchet reached down for one of the metal files from Charlie's toolbox, "the blaster burns and lacerations on Bumblebee's arms are best left for his metabolism to restore. No sense even welding them closed, not unless they're bothering him."

"So," Charlie rolled her wrist, "what's the triage for deciding when to patch something?"

"'Triage!'" Charlie hadn't expected him to like the term so much. "So your processors are good for something other than identifying bolts, ah? We'll get to that." He took a breath through all his vents. "First understand that Bumblebee's spark chamber was breached, which is the most severe sort of injury our kind can suffer. 

"He remained vivacious enough to keep his fluids in plasma suspension around the spark, and managed to fight his way free of his attacker, which is why he is still alive today," Ratchet gently filed away rust by hand, and Charlie got to admire his surgical grade precision with such a tiny implement, "but if I had not patched the chamber, he would have bled out until he lost enough core pressure for the plasma suspension to fail, and then all his energon—his blood—would have simply poured out the gaping holes in his body like any other liquid."

Charlie now appreciated why Ironhide had been smacking Bee around for being 'heroic,' and she mimed kicking at him. He ducked and buzzed itty bitty apologies, all of which were far too adorable to stay mad with. 

"Hold _still,_ Bumblebee. Now, that is not to say that the only time we replace parts is for critical injuries," continued their doctor. "Far from it. An engine, a set of tires, a weapon, a set of optics; on our own world, left to our own devices, we would be upgrading, interchanging, and editing ourselves. That is part of our natural evolution over time; humans cannot do anything similar, but do not need to, as you do not live as long. Your nearest analog is change that occurs from generation to generation."

Autobots live a long time: Check. "How does scanning new cars factor into that?" Charlie wondered. "Bee was a Volkswagen, a Chevy, and now a Ford."

"Different principal entirely: That is _imitation, _not adaptation. It doesn't fully change the underlying parts, it merely... mnn, _shuffles_ them to resemble something else." Ratchet put aside the metal file and picked up the welding torch. "Typically operating in a sub-optimal capacity. Cover your optics, please."

Charlie obeyed to avoid a blinding by welding sparks. 

"Everybot is different," Ratchet added as he welded shut the corner of the patch. "Scouts, like B-127, tend to be particularly good at imitation. The adaptation happens in nanoklicks and they may be able to retain plans for more than one disguise or even composite disguises from multiple plans. At the other end of the spectrum: Myself. I left the vast majority of my original vehicular parts behind when I came to this planet. My mesh never has bent particularly well, and my, _mnn_, 'power train' does not suffer itself to change much at all."

"You downgraded to the level of human technology?" Charlie asked while still blind.

"Only my alternate form, and the parts eventually integrated. It was that or end up looking incredibly _unsubtle _about my unearthly origins. You can uncover your eyes. Cybertronian vehicles rarely have doors, seats, driving wheels, or even space inside of them for passengers."

"I didn't even think of that."

"Besides, what do I need a powerful engine for? Which race are _these_ wheels headed to in a hurry?" Red metal eyebrows waggled almost like he was making a joke about age and being slow, but Charlie couldn't see enough of his face to be sure if she should laugh or not. He looked back to Bumblebee and knocked on his chest plating. "First layer, please."

Yellow plating cracked open and slid out of the way, lagging on one side and exposing that puncture wound. Ratchet immediately gravitated to examining a slow motor.

"What exactly happened when I replaced Bee's old broken radio?" Charlie asked. "He was kinda banged up at the time I installed it."

"Well... natural healing can be slowed by installing too many parts at once, especially when a person is low on energon." He reached for her can of WD-40, which interested her. "But a human radio is merely an inconsequential peripheral system; it would have been integrated after primary system repairs. There is a difference between the intrinsic self—the protoform—and what is considered our our upgrades or peripherals—colloquially known as our 'parts'—even if the line between the two is admittedly somewhat blurred."

"What, uh, what exactly do you mean when you say 'native?'" Charlie was trying to work out the distinction. "You mean materials that originated on Earth, right? How is our steel different from alien steel? Isn't it all the same elements of the periodic table?"

"Ours is alive on the microscopic level. It carries our genetic material, our... mnn, let us use the portmanteau 'CNA.' Our armor sits atop a layer of mesh, and is nourished by our energon—our fuel, our blood—and it is indirectly linked back to our spark—our core—and, so long as we are alive, it is protected and strengthened by our charge. We can also engineer medical patches and design medical patches specially pre-prepared living metal, which integrates to our individual systems much faster than a simple piece of inactive steel. But producing such things takes time, chemicals, factories..."

"And you're low on supplies from home?"

He nodded deeply.

Charlie had to give that one a think-over. "Then... If your CNA slowly infiltrates whatever you're connected to, does that makes you some kind of parasite?"

Ratchet twisted to drop quite the expression on her, lips pressed wide in a grimace, eyes wide. Then he busted out laughing, which, if Bumblebee's wide-eyed expression was anything to go by, must have been really rare. 

"What?" Charlie laughed, thrown off by his reaction but also sort of impressed with herself.

Ratchet was still laughing. "Asks the organism made of _cells!_"

"But, w-what happens if you and another robot end up touching the same metal? Are your cyber-microbes both fighting over who gets to integrate it until you let go? Or what would happen if your spark was put in some random native appliance, or—?"

"_Weird things,_" Ratchet answered almost conspiratorially, with a spread of his fingers (and a flinch from Bee) that left her wondering if she'd sounded like a mad scientist, and/or if Ratchet was maybe, possibly, very _slightly_ diabolical. "But _today _we are limiting ourselves to when to weld or install your inferior Earth materials into one of our injuries, and when not to."

Charlie saluted and sat back on her palms, "Like how _you_ need a new transmission because it's complicated and intricate and we already established that your body sucks at turning what you already have into new things?"

Ratchet made an offended sneeze, or _whatever_ one wanted to call it, but then kept smirking wide enough she could see it tugging at his face. 

"_Aside _from mortal injuries and peripherals..." he droned far too smugly for someone who'd just been insulted, "the decision on whether to make a native material installation is a trade-off. On one hand, even a living metal transplant takes time and energy to fully integrate, and that can distract from healing damage to vital internal organs On the other hand, patches also provides protection and scaffolding for a wound that would otherwise seal up as a very large scar, void, or," he gestured to his knee in between switching tools, "_a stump_."

"So you'll be building out that leg?"

"Once vital internal transplants adjust..."

* * *

Bumblebee watched, looking back and forth between Charlie and Ratchet, antenna lifting as they went back and forward, question and answer, lecture lecture lecture, info info info. 

"Now, triage: Bumblebee's armor is an example of a patch in which the trade-off was worth it: First of all, the missing breastplate material was of broad diameter, to the tune of two servospans. Secondly, it exposed his Spark Chamber, which I have just explained must be protected at all costs—"

Charlie was leaned forward to watch Ratchet's face as he worked. Her fingers looked secure on a seam of his shoulder plate. She was _smiling. _She didn't look lost for a second, and she definitely didn't look like she was holding any grudges about those bruises.

"—lastly I conceal the weak spot in his plating so that others who did not see his condition after the fight with Megatron do not know he is vulnerable here, and that his natural shielding is lower. They don't know what to shoot at, and future damage is avoided—"

_Look at you. _Bee had started smiling. _You're liking this? You like _him._ Well that's new. Heh! _

Most people knew to get out of his way—and with good reason! Ratchet was _scary_. He didn't __tolerate __having people around him. 

_You know what? I think he likes you, too. I mean, look at him. He's _smiling. _That's weird and I should know; __I've seen more smiles on Ultra Magnus. And I'm not even a Wrecker!_

"—damage to an important internal organ, such the spark harmonic regulator or fuel synthesizer. If a transplant is unavailable, a patch can be used. Otherwise at bare minimum one must resort to a low fidelity prototype. Without core systems online, healing—"

Bumblebee had never seen Ratchet take to anyone this fast, organic or otherwise. Was this just cause Charlie was Charlie? Honestly a lot of the Autobots' other humans friends had been pretty special, too. Ironhide seemed to think it had something to do with how Ratchet was rarely the bot who needed someone else to fix _him._

"Now. Did you catch all of that?"

"Yeah." She was still smiling! "I think so."

"Good. Repeat it back to me."

Maybe it had taken six or seven smart humans for Ratchet to finally open up to the eighth one. Maybe right now it was a relief to have any help at all, even alien help. Maybe he'd _already_ tried to shout and threaten her away, but it hadn't worked like it had on everybody else ever in the entire history of everything, so he'd given up and begrudgingly left his bubble open. Maybe he was having an _old person crisis_ and freaking out about how _nobody knew this stuff _except him.

_Or. Maybe not._ _Maybe Charlie's just utterly and completely awesome. _

Gleefully, Bee decided he was going to settle on that last option. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where was I? Oh yes, sentio is a verb and metallico is an adjective, so the result is not a noun. 
> 
> 'Sentio' also doesn't meant 'sentient' or 'living,' it means 'to feel.' So sentio metallico could mean 'I feel metallic,' except for the part where you would always put the verb at the end of the sentence, so it would be metallico sentio. But wait, why do you have metallico in a weird case? 'Cause the actual root form is metallicum, not -co. 
> 
> You'd also want metallum instead of metallicum, cause, you know, you need a noun. And now you need an adjective instead of sentio, so... viventem? That means living. Typically adjectives go after nouns, so there you go: metallum viventem. At least if I didn't botch a declension like I do when mixing Liber and Liberatis.
> 
> And that concludes today's lecture in MMS101: Native Transplants, 4 Credits. Romans Go Home!


	20. The Complication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder if that's like in theatre, like the thing you're supposed to get introduced to which’ll kick off the second act.
> 
> *Checks notes*
> 
> Nope, apparently we're going to sit here in the Scrap Yard chillin' with the Autobots for another twenty chapters? Yeah, that totally works for me, too.
> 
> Serial written media like fanfiction exists to do the stuff other media forms don't have time for.

Ratchet would have probably been working faster if he hadn't been pointing out every feature of every injury, gesturing with a lot of diagnostic devices, files, and sand paper of different grains. Neither of them about to rush or interrupt him—Charlie _or _Bee.

Any time Ratchet started leaning to the side, Bee would scoot around in place until Ratchet could sit straight again. He'd lift any limb he was told to. When Ratchet made a decision to weld together an old crack in an internal component, Bee stayed perfectly still even though his shuttered eyelids and flat antenna indicated it most probably stung. And just as soon as that was over, up his antenna sprung up again.

Charlie shot her 'little' yellow bot a glance between quizzes and winked at him and stuck out her tongue. Bee's face lit up in a smile. He was so _spherical._ He might not have had the most human face, but he unabashedly had the most animated one. Bee had made a fantastic Volkswagon Beetle, but she wouldn't tell him that and take away his image of himself as a muscle car. Ratchet said he was young, and young guys had to dream!

Young, hot headed, kick-ass, apparently a team leader, and apparently—when he wanted to be—a _complete angel_, even for the grumpiest of bots.

Sounded about right!

Ratchet's lecture had reached a satisfactory conclusion. He reviewed his handiwork and then turned away. For a moment it seemed like he was finished with his examination, because he was putting aside the welder and rearranging tools.

"Dwee?" Bee jerked his thumb at the exit and tilted his head. _Am I good?_

"I'll tell you what." Ratchet smiled tightly. "I will give you one chance to come clean to me."

Blue eyes widened. "Bwee???"

"You were very clever to lower your lateral plates over whatever it is. But I am the group medic. And my vantage point has been a few heads shorter of late. If you were thinking I wasn't going to notice, you are mistaken."

Bee clasped his hands together, shrunk, and looked bashfully from side to side. But he wasn't getting out of this one by cuteness alone. Charlie scooted her tush and patted Ratchet's shoulder to try and indicate she'd get down and have a look at whatever this 'problem' was. Ratchet let her carefully down without a word, like he was deploying her to do exactly that.

Bee glanced at her evasively, his antenna flat. Something was up.

"C'mon Bee," she encouraged. "You handled all this other damage. What could be worse?"

"Mwwwnnn."

"He'll be gentle."

"I made no such promise."

Oh yeah? Charlie glanced back to see Ratchet's attention elsewhere; he was twisted away to reach for a set of calipers. Charlie glanced closer to herself to where he'd temporarily set down his new favorite wrench: The half-incher with extension bar. She leaned over and picked it up. When Ratchet reached blindly her direction to retrieve it, his fingers closed on only air. Gasp. Where had it gone? Angular blue eyes shot to her and narrowed.

"I need that."  
  
"Yup," Charlie agreed he did. "That's why it's being held hostage in return for a nicer bedside manner. Give me a sec." She turned her attention back to Bee, and reached up to him. "So hey, what's wrong?" He didn't melt into her like usual, but he leaned a little her way. She touched his arm and chassis. "Bee?"

Bumblebee wiggled from side to side, tucking his hands in under his armpits to cover about where 'ribs' ought to be on a person.

"Bee," she reached up for his face, pulling blue eyes down to hers. "What's wrong, huh?" He warbled quietly. "It's me. You can show me, right? What am I gonna do to it, hmm?"

His odd behavior continued a little longer, wiggling back and forward, nervous and uncomfortable. Then the fingers closest to her curled and lifted away. His plating hiked up into what she now realized was a more natural configuration, and exposed a problem: There, burrowed into his side and forcing away the rubberized coating of his waist, was a big glossy balloon of metal feathered in stripes of rust. She was reminded of bubbles rising up under car paint, only this thing was easily the size of a bowling ball.

Charlie heard clacking and scraping and glanced—Oh! _Bee_. Bumblebee's bulky armor and crossed arms had completely blocked out Ratchet's vision of the injury. Given that Ratchet was actively trying to push Bumblebee's arms out of the way, and Bee wasn't giving an inch, Charlie was pretty sure this was the point.

"Bumblebee," Ratchet growled, good knee bending as he tried to get around the defensive block. "Stop being ridiculous. Whatever's wrong—"

"Zzzzwww!" Bee rose up on his knees and twisted his injured side away. He held Ratchet firmly back away from himself.

"Careful, guys!" Charlie reminded them, because 'right on top of her' wasn't a good place for a wrestling match.

Ratchet sank back to use his words. "Show me your flank, Bumblebee."  
  
Zz-zz!" Bee shook his head. (Was that really all he could manage? 'No?')

Ratchet was getting frustrated. As he breathed, Charlie could see his silver tongue, clamped lightly between his teeth; he was trying not to yell, and it was a very human facial expression. Ratchet looked pointedly at her, and jerked his chin at Bee, requesting she do something.

Bumblebee's antenna both came up. He looked at her quickly, clearly asking for just the opposite.

Charlie wasn't actually sure who to side with. She took a step back, looking from robot to robot.

What was really going on here? Bee had been a model patient up until this point, so why was he suddenly acting out a fit of childish immaturity? Was he not explaining himself even to Ratchet, over the airwaves? Charlie rubbed at the back of her neck, because something stank. Still: Healthy metal _didn't_ rust. Rust waS a sign of illness.

"Does Bumblebee have any transplant organs?" she asked Ratchet.

"In that location? No. It could be a secondary infection."

"It... looked like a big ball of..." she trailed off and tried to get a second look, but Bumblebee surprised her by flinching away. His plates slapped back down over it. Charlie looked up in surprise. "What's wrong?"  
  
Bumblebee mimicked a puppy's whimper. He was sorry, but he didn't want any more attention on this spot, and he cupped his hand protectively back over it.

Charlie laid a hand over his, her fingers curling on the tip of his. She thought about the shower conversation, steeled herself, and looked back at Ratchet. "I don't think he wants us to touch it."

Bee made such a pitiful little sigh. He sounded painfully relieved.

"I see." Ratchet pinched the bridge of his nose like he was fighting the Cybertronian equivalent of a migraine. "Then describe it to me, please, so I can assess whether to get Ironhide and Mirage in here to hold him down."

Bee hissed, and then looked very petulant. Could he not explain it himself?

"It was round and metal," Charlie tried to be his voice (and Ratchet's eyes). "But it looked really odd, almost like... like badly blown glass?" She lifted her hands to the right size. "It was that same dark color as the rest of his internal parts, but it was streaky and rusty."

Ratchet squinted thoughtfully. "It sounds like an... an abscess," he selected his word. "Collecting fluid after the fact from an infection or other small abnormality."

"Something like a blister?" she thought back on the shape of what she'd seen.

"The appropriate procedure would be to lance and drain it of fluid so that—"

"REEEE!" Bee firmly disagreed, kicking away from Ratchet and clambering to his feet. He hunkered there with his sides both protected even though only one appeared to be injured. And he kept shooting frantic glances at Charlie, looks that got her heart racing, like he needed some kind of help. It was becoming painfully obvious he was struggling to communicate with Ratchet.

"He says no," Charlie translated.

"Mnzz!" Bee confirmed.

"Bumblebee," Ratchet held in his temper and revealed a very neat scalpel from the side of his hand, "get your tailpipe back here, sit down, and let me see what you've—"

Bee stomped and buzzed angrilly.

Ratchet's temper snapped. "Primus' sake, 'Lieutenant!'" he shouted, "Compose actual words, and stop grunting and squealing like some kind of unintelligent anima—"

With a deep breath, Bee wheezed a nightmarish, tortured combination of sounds, like breathy nails on a chalkboard, more than one, all at the same time.

Charlie spun back to her bot in alarm. Bee squatted there, one hand over his side and the other now up squeezing at his neck. His wings were trembling. Everything inside her chest squeezed together on the fierce need to protect him.

"Is it possible it's sensitive?" she suggested with an edge, because Ratchet needed to put that scalpel away unless this was some kind of _immediate_ and life-threatening emergency.

Bee looked soulfully her way. He was breathing hard from every air vent And exhaust pipe, motors all up and whirring. His face begged her to stay with him, on his side. _I am_, she tried to say back with her eyes, and wished so badly he could tell her what was wrong.

When Ratchet spoke again his voice was unexpectedly monotone. Charlie turned back to see his face blank. "The quickest way to relieve any pain is to drain the obstruction so it can heal."

Bee rapidly shook his head, crept over, above, and past Charlie, and then shrank down behind her, tucked all his limbs in, and peeked out over her shoulder like he could ever somehow possibly hide back there. Charlie crossed her arms and chewed on the inside of her cheek. She looked up at Ratchet. 

"I don't think this is worth fighting him over," she said. "Is it?"

Ratchet's face remained placid. Something hovered there, at the corner of his mouth; and for a few seconds the expression worsened and he looked regretful, or guilty. He'd obviously meant for Bee to use the airwaves to send some kind of message, but...

Ratchet looked away and began rearranging supplies.

Another moment passed in silence, but the air between them felt like it was clearing up a little, and the tension was dying down. They weren't going to keep fighting.  
  
"We'll check on it in a lunar cycle and see if it is already on the mend or has increased in diameter," Ratchet at last decided—with long suffering and tremendous martyrdom over the antics of fools—in an imperious tone of voice he immediately ruined by adding, "Now give me my wrench back."

"Pretty sure this was _my_ wrench," Charlie spun the implement and held it out for him to pluck from her, and smiled tightly. "But I'm honored to have you use it, sir."

Right now she just needed to get outside with Bee and hopefully calm him down. Maybe she could get him to open up in private. If not, she at least could get him 'talking' again.


	21. Romantic or Awful

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its easy to drown in Transformers lore if you're not careful @.@
> 
> It's fun playing in the world of Bumblebee (2018) because so much is still undefined. You want Prime characters, you take them. IDW worldbuilding? It's yours! You wanna drag Michael Bay through the dirt behind a Mad Max Megatron WarRig—[oh wait no that's someone else's idea. ](https://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/188438651046/so-youkaiyume-talked-with-me-about-a-fury)

Bee apparently had other plans.

"If there's nothing else you're concealing from me, we're done here, Lieu—"

VROOM! An engine roared behind Charlie, and she looked back in surprise to see her best friend had taken off from his marks like there'd been a gunshot. He dove, rolled, took on his Mustang form, and his wheels squealed out the door before Charlie could so much as manage a word.

"Okay...?" she leaked. "I guess we'll talk later...?" Bumblebee had left her standing there like an abandoned crutch. She felt appropriately wobbly for a second or two.

The relationship dynamics in this group were _bizarre_. Those things Dino had said to undermine her confidence swirled up to fill her with questions. Nobody's interactions were matching her expectations of _soldiers._

Nhhff. The excitement of meeting four new people, reuniting with a new friend, and reentering a world where giant robots existed... Her stomach felt full of butterflies. _Okay._ Charlie shook that sort of stuff away and looked back to Ratchet. He was ignoring her, and quietly picking out spare parts to work on.

"Why..." she cleared her throat, "why did you let him off the hook?"

If Ratchet was angry at whose side she'd taken, he didn't say so. Maybe he and she were even on the same mental wavelength right now, because he gave her an answer to a lot of her unspoken questions:

"Military grade discipline isn't natural." His voice stayed low. "It's meant to get a job done, not to live by; attempting to sustain it indefinitely is impossible, or at least has consequences. Any time a war goes on as long as ours has... Things start to melt together. Codes become more like guidelines. It eventually comes to pass that everything we'll ever experience, all our sadness and joy, our love, our loss, every chapter of our lives, occurs inside the framework of war.

"There is more to keeping a mech fighting than the soundness of his body. And when an ordinarily expressive mute freezes like that...

"As you put it: It wasn't worth fighting over."

Charlie looked off in Bee's direction but, by the sound of things, he'd taken off and was long gone. Still feeling a little crumpled, she threw up her arms, wiped her brow, and then eventually sat back beside their medic. She didn't want to be alone. She helped Ratchet pick out gears in silence. Her hands were smaller and she could get them spread out for his perusal faster. He selected two in blank-faced silence.

"Ratchet, did you... Did you ever try to fix Bee's voice?"

Ratchet's bland facial expression didn't survive. The corners of his mouth tugged down. He tilted his head as if fighting them. Then his eyes squeezed closed. "Several times."

She looked back up at him in surprise. "Why didn't it work?"

"Newer model," Ratchet muttered, tilting his head back, eyes still closed. "Newer part. Bumblebee came online in the early phases of the war. There were very few models that ever had a voice synthesizer like his, and fewer still online today."

Phrases like 'online' were confusing her. "Were you born?" She still didn't know any of these basic things about them, and at least Ratchet was still willing to talk to her. "Or made?"

"I came online one night in late autumn," the medic answered, "as my creators walked the same plain their ancestors had for generations before them, eyes on the stars.

"As new sparks fell to the earth, they and other prospective parents rushed to meet them, to gather them up before they faded, and to place them into protoforms they had made of their own living metal and polymer. You may imagine either an egg or cradle. Or both.

"Bumblebee came online with two and a half thousand identical siblings as a hijacked shipment of frozen sparks pulled into the hangar bay and delivered its payload. The factory had been seized by the rebellion—_by us_—and the sparklings came online with our insignia, our comm frequency, and our encryption keys, just two breem—fifteen minutes—before the council's army arrived.

"They were 'born' into adult bodies, their alternate form already decided upon, with weaponry installed and combat heuristics uploaded. Lives constructed on an assembly line for an explicit societal purpose.

"They were only designed as couriers, and they'd been retrofitted midway through the production cycle as mere combat scouts, but on launch they fought like hell. They had no fear. No sense of self. Just bearings of steel and a collective understanding they were under attack."

Bee had been _born _into an adult body? Into a battle? Into-? Just-? Charlie smoothed her hair back, grabbing the sides of her head to try and digest where the hell her BFF had come from. "That... sounds... horrible."

"We'd gotten used to such things. Automatization and standardization were sold to us as signs of progress."

"The example you gave of walking in the field sounded romantic," Charlie argued. "The example with the assembly line was horrible."

Ratchet only nodded, and looked back down to the work he was doing in his chassis. 

"His... Bumblebee's voice synthesizer was intricate technology you don't have the tools to rebuild from scratch?" Charlie tried to understand.

"Over-engineered by a workshop long since bombed to oblivion," Ratchet confirmed. "Trying to replace it is like trying to plug vacuum tubes into a floppy drive. Very few representatives of his generation survived even just to study. And soon..." Ratchet took a deep, nostalgic breath, "too soon for anyone... there were no more new generations at all."

"...What does that mean?"

"Hmm. Perhaps ask Ironhide."

Ratchet's voice suggested that he wanted to be alone with what might be painful memories right now.

Charlie rubbed her face, furious at herself for not drinking up every bit of information on the news. It was a bit much to want to get The Complete History and Medical Dictionary of Cybertron plus The Private Biography of Every Person Present, all in the first full day of meeting a people.

People with not only their own personal, emotional, social, and cultural problems, but with huge physical problems, too, like internal bleeding and missing limbs. These Autobots weren't entirely safe; not here, not anywhere. Charlie was going to have to keep a list of things she wanted to ask. She was also going to have to be patient, because there were a lot more important things than educating her to be focusing on right now.

"Is there..." Charlie put away the gears Ratchet hadn't selected. "Is there a mission right now?"

"Right now," Ratchet answered, "I am getting myself travel-worthy while the others assemble a plan to to seize a radio broadcasting tower. We need to warn our fellow Autobots the humans have broken their end of the deal and turned their military on us."

As shitty as that was, to slap a label like 'betrayer' on her own species, Charlie got why the message needed to be sent. It'd save lives. Apparently irreplaceable lives. "Can I be of help?"

"You are already being of help, Charlie Watson."

Those words set her back on her heels, and her throat tightened; they'd satiated something and still left her hungry and empty. Charlie didn't answer immediately. There was no way, no possibly way, she'd helped _enough. _She ended up blurting, "I'm always going to end up on Bee's side," like it was some kind of apology.

Angular blue glanced her way; Ratchet looked her tiredly up and down before engrossing himself back in his self-repair. "B-127 could use someone on his side right now."

* * *

Charlie left the shelter and its smells of oil and other Cybertronian bodily fluids. The sun was setting. She tried to think about what Ratchet was telling her.

Or why three of four strangers, aliens who'd just been attacked by human kind, had responded positively to her.

Scratching through her hair, Charlie blew out a big sigh, and then squatted down and covered her face and rocked from toe to heel, trying to think.

She was fifty hours from home, if one didn't count breaks to pee, eat, and sleep; and there was no way she'd head back to San Fran, not in a million years. She was just one person; but somehow she was in the right place, at the right time. Again.

Charlie lifted her head and folded her hands in front of herself, and stared at them. They were still stained with oil.

She knew more about fixing living machines than anyone here but Ratchet, which was sort of funny, but made sense if you knew how little humans understood how to fix _other human beings. _

Charlie didn't have to 'make sense' of everything going on right now. She didn't have to understand the war, remember the tragedies, or hear more about where Bumblebee had come from. She was in over her head, yeah, and that wasn't going to change quickly; but that was okay, because it didn't need to. She could _do _'in over her head.'

The Autobots were the adults of the situation. They knew their own history, and they'd been on the Earth long enough to keep themselves safe(-ish). Even with them being banged up, stressed out, war weary, and at times emotional, Charlie could rely on them to know what they were doing, and she could play a helpful or supportive role to whoever needed it. They seemed to need any booster they could get right now. 

Which meant Charlie didn't have to understand _anything_ other than how to weld and properly use a torque wrench right now, because that was what _she _was giving to the group. She wasn't the one making the big top level decisions that everyone else depended on.

Oh, but... _Bee_ was.

Bee, who'd just had some kind of panic attack and gone racing out of the scrap yard. Bee, who was the Lieutenant even if Dino wasn't happy about that arrangement. Bee, who was hopefully doing something like patrolling the perimeter and not driving blindly off into trouble at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.

_Okay, Charlie. Focus. What can you do to help Bumblebee out? Anything?_

Baiting out any more intense conversations felt like overkill for today, whether they be personal or expository. Charlie had already been a distraction, the target of a disinformation attempt, a victim of innocent curiosity, a pupil in the art of Autobot mechanics, and on the receiving end of a sad lecture about what sounded like the end of an entire species. Her brain was overloaded with new things, new people, new faces, new problems, new information. She wasn't really ready to ask Ironhide or anyone else for more.

Charlie got up and dusted her hands off on her jeans, and noticed Dino leering at her from across the way. Ignoring him, she squinted at the far edges of the scrap yard and then did a double take when she saw a dilapidated old barn.

_Hnh!_

She decided to go have a look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While the story of Bumblebee's automated construction *is* sad...
> 
> ... at least now you get to imagine tiny baby Ratchet in his bright white and red, gumming on his own toe plates and giggling as his parents sit together shoulder to shoulder and sigh romantically and watch sparks fall from the sky as other parents hurry out to catch them. 
> 
> Drift: .........  
Author: "You're going to start crying, aren't you."  
Drift: "I am going to start crying."  
Author: "You're not even IN this story!"  
Drift: (Starts babbling incoherently about the itty bitty baby Ratchet, similar in tone and color to how many people begin sobbing at the sight of kittens or puppies)  
Hot Rod: "Move along people, nothing to see here, nothing to see!"


	22. Didn't Have to Love Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phrases Needed by Bee:
> 
> [I'm Sorry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HI_xFQWiYU) but I'm just thinkin' of the right words to say!  
You didn't have to love me like you did, like you did, but I [Thank You!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhlSvVxLYjw)

Wheels, underbelly, fenders, and flaps coated in another round of mud, Bee raced guiltily back onto the scrap yard.

Somewhere out on patrol he'd gotten his radio working again and had blasted music at the top of his speakers. But inevitably that made him think of a human female drumming on the steering wheel in traffic as she sang the lyrics, or flying a shirt out the window like a flag in some culturally quirky but relatable show of wildness.

To which Bumblebee remembered Charlie repeatedly checking back on his face as Ratchet had insisted on cutting open the tender patch in Bumblebee's side.

_Why didn't I grab Charlie on the way out!? Did I ditch her!?_

He came into the scrap yard, peeked into the shelter, fled quickly before Ratchet could catch sight of him, and looked left, right, and around the back. Finally he nudged Dino, who pointed with an elbow.

Bee turned around and blinked headlights at a pretty sad looking building the five of them had bypassed when looking for shelter for Ratchet because it was wooden. Wood wasn't a material native to Cybertron. Nobody had been able to tell how dangerous or given to collapse it might be.

Wheels squealing, Bee made tracks for it.

* * *

"Wuuuwuu?" Bee called, cautiously approaching the door that had long ago fallen off its hinges. He didn't dare touch anything, afraid the whole building might go down like a card castle. He switched his headlamps on and was surprised to see what looked like pneumatic lifts for servicing cars.

Okay, huh. Was this what had attracted Charlie to the location? Could she be on some kind of errand for Ratchet, or had she just gotten bored or anxious_ (you totallllyyy ditched her, Bee)_ and wandered off to investigate the most familiar thing she could find?

"Charlie?" he played.

"In here!" she called. "Stay outside, would you? I'm only going to be a second longer. The roof in here's really bad, and I just got flashbacks to you in our living room..."

Bee backed up and mumbled apologetically. He looked up at the tall, lopsided structure with its peeling red paint and buckling shingles. Then he looked down at himself, and the careless fresh coating of filth Charlie had just helped him wash off. He huffed despondently and sagged on his wheels. 

_Why is today so loonnnnnngg? Slag. Maybe I'm still tired from the fight yesterday. _

'Course it wasn't like he'd taken any serious hits. Maybe he was just tired in general. An early recharge tonight sounded nice. He focused on the sagging building again. 

_She is totally right, I would absolutely knock this place over. I don't even know how I'd knock it over, and I would. _That thought made him laugh a little internally. _Never thought of myself as much of a klutz before. _Human things were so fragile!

Bee picked up the sound of water pressure and straightened, wondering if Charlie had gotten dirty again and crept off to find a more discrete area to look for more water lines and change (again). A half minute later she appeared at the doorway, carrying a plastic bucket of water with bottles jammed in her pockets, a hose over her shoulder and some kind of metal and cloth squeegee thingy in the other hand.

Bee perked up to see her, saying: "♫ I'm sorry, but I'm just thinking of the right words to say; I know they don't sound the way I planned them to be— ♫"

She started laughing, walking up beside his wheel well and patting him. "If I had a dollar for every time I ran out of the house when my mom was trying to talk to me," she said, and set the bucket down. "I'd be able to afford my own mustang, and then we'd match."

Bee felt bad right up until the last three words, and then flipped completely and found it so cute and he didn't tell her it was technically 'rude' to suggest anyone's model or make could be easily replaced. 

Anyway, that would have been a complicated thing to say with a radio.

Sigh.

(I want to talk to her. I - want - to - talk -to - Charlie. I don't want to use the radio. Shh, self. This isn't helping. Make peace with the radio. Be one with the radio. Channel your inner disk jockey. Mistake yourself for someway way more zen than you are. Pretend you know what a disk jockey might actually look like, instead of only ever having heard the term on the radio. )

Bumblebee came back to attentiveness with a squeak when Charlie backed up, pointed her water gun and squirted him. Then he twisted his wheels from side to side and lifted his windshield wipers and shifted his plates to let the dirt break loose. She walked around behind him, hosing down his bumper and rear window, and came up on the other side.

Ooh-hooo! It felt nice to be clean. Like a ghost of the first time he'd been driven through a car wash, except less confusing and intimidating (Bee had to admit to vocalizing like a child in a horror movie and then rolling out in a high-strung daze, to Sam's laughter).

Thinking of Sam made him ten times as grateful Charlie was there. As she turned the hose off, he popped a door gently open into her side, singing,

"♫ You didn't have to love me like you did; But you did, but you did; And I thank you...! ♫"

"Hold your horsepower," Charlie smiled and pushed the door shut. "You're not even close to being done here."

Bee chirped a question. Charlie set the hose aside, and then began taking on old dusty bottles she'd hooked into her overalls and setting them gently on Bee's hood, in a line, one after the other. He could feel them up there, but not see them.

"Can you read English?" she asked, as she stepped back and started pushing her sleeves up and scooped up her hair to tie it back in an old rubber band.

Bumblebee slowly swooshed his windshield wipers from side to side, because, uh, _sort of_, but not well, and he couldn't even see these. 

She tapped on the first bottle and he felt the vibrations through the bottom of it. "Car shampoo." The next, again in a little bottle. "Tire cleaner." The next, a little tub. "Turtle wax." The next in a can. "Glass cleaner."

As she continued to name them, Bee wondered what it all meant. Many of them sounded car-related! Was she worried about him after being shown all his patches and injuries? He looked for a song to tell her he was fine.

But Charlie crouched down and pulled her bucket of water (and soapy foam?) to herself, and Bee was curious. There was a sponge inside, which she squeezed. She stood and—to his astonishment—leaned over him, pressed the sponge down into his paint and then swiped it in big round circles over his hood.

Bumblebee sat there, flabbergasted and soapy.

A soft poofy sponge found and followed the gaps between his hood and body, and then dropped into the polymer grill of his cowl panel. Small fingers pressed deep into every tiny groove and scrubbed forward and back.

_I-I don't think my on-board dictionary knows a word for this... Restoration? Dermal varnish restoration?_

The sponge went sideways over the back of his mirror for a few scrubs and then down over his wheel well and the length of his door. He shuddered and sagged subconsciously onto his left wheel shocks, closer to the hand resting on his metal and the sponge making firm circles behind his wheel. The edge of her thumb pressed in along the joint of his door as the sponge slid up and down.

_Wow._

"Someone likes his shampoo," Charlie quipped. "Should we hang out at salons more?"

Bee rasped static and said absolutely nothing to reassure her that his body or glass or polymer condition was fine. Nothing to dissuade her from what she was doing. Nope. Not a thing. _This is awesome, Charlie._

Bumblebee had been carried off of battlefield. He'd been repaired. He'd been upgraded. He'd gotten plenty a companionable shove or clap on the back. He'd been touched before, right? Of course. All the time. He'd also gone through his fair share of decontamination units and wash racks and, now, through plenty of car washes.

But this? Whatever this was? Bumblebee didn't get this from Autobots or car washes.

It felt like Charlie, essential Charlie, like her curious hands on his face, or her hugs around his neck or shoulder, or the way she'd reach out and wrap her entire hand around just one of his fingers.

He sagged towards her until his belly was nearly touching the ground. Vaguely—oh so vaguely—he could remember fragmented memories of this happening once before. Maybe as a Beetle? Maybe before he'd really been conscious, after the fight with Blitzwing...? Back when many of his primary systems had been offline, his carburetor had been shot, and his native fuel synthesis in limbo? 

Whenever it had been, the dull half-formed dream like memories were replaced with much clearer ones. A sponge went traveling over his side and cab and then down over his rear wheel well, followed along by a hand that braced against him for balance and support.

Bee tilted subconsciously away from it this time, lifting the wheel well because there was a giant clod of mud caked somewhere up there. She found it and picked it out with her fingers, and then patted his flank when her hand was free so he could settle back down on that wheel without pinching her.

This was so nice. Charlie either had no idea, or she did, and anyway he puttered and whirred his gratitude.

"You're just one big puppy dog," she teased.

Bee played a pet commercial with a dog barking._ Arf arf. I am a puppy. If this is what being a puppy means, count me in forever please. It's rad. _

"That's my car," she snickered, patting his flank. "Looks like a hot shot; deep down's a cutie pie."

_Hey! _Bee pouted but then did some self-reflection. _I am so both,_ he thought at her conspiratorially and rocked himself smugly in place._ Simultaneously._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is pleasurably subversive and tactile to write a car wash scene in an 'action movie' that actually focused on *cleaning the car.* Time bring whip out the degreaser and tire blacker, ladies!


	23. Clean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We continue with more scrubby dubby time. 
> 
> 1\. For when you need a rock song with intense instrumental solos: [Hot For Teacher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMPlPJP2brw) \- Van Halen Although if you actually want to see someone play the drums for it, it's like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OKOTNkvfa8)  
2\. Some Karate Kid: [ The Moment Of Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b_aQBf4D2Ithi) \- Survivor  


Charlie had seen Jazz, Ironhide, and Bee react to a simple garden hose, but she hadn't been entirely sure what Bumblebee would make of a full detailing.

On spying all the right chemicals in the barn, the opportunity had struck her as the sort of nice thing you could do 'for' a normal car. Why not give it a shot? What was the worst reaction she could possibly get? If Bee had gotten bored or impatient, like the whole experience didn't much interest him, she'd have worked quickly and focused ninety percent of her efforts on checking in on his internal upholstery to make sure it wasn't picking up mud when he transformed.

Instead, not half a minute had passed when she got telltale signs of enjoyment. If the purring motor hadn't made his feelings abundantly clear clear, then the way the whole car leaned into her hands like a dog getting its back scratched was a giveaway. _Bingo, Charlie. You miraculously found something nice to do for overworked alien robots, in the middle of nowhere, in a scrap heap. You are a genius._

"Play something," she requested, and his radio wavered back and forward before randomly settling on a rock station.

Charlie grooved in place to the beat, chasing mud, scratches, and smudges with her sponge and wash clothes. She zenned out to the familiar task of caring for a vehicle, paying attention to every detail and common problem spot.

_Ooh, Van Halen._ She drummed her fingers rapidly against the ridge of the tail fin. _Whaaaoo!_

Her Mustang swung its butt back and forward a few inches side to side. "Whoa now, wild and crazy dance moves over here," she snickered.

Charlie had found a wheel brush, and stopped at each of the four in-between wiping off the body. Best to do this at the same time as the shampoo since grime would splatter everywhere. Bee was presently _using_ his wheels and they were off-roading to boot, so it didn't make sense to get obsessive on a flawless clean. Still, she could scrub off anything like nuts and screws and debris that were trying to fuse with the rubber, and brush out grime from the wheel well. He tried to be helpful by slowly rotating and turning his wheels.

"I need your yellow butt up on a lift," she joked, slapping the fender fondly and standing to look for something she could kneel on. Bee shuddered and his motors rumbled louder. She found plywood that'd make for a good temporary seat, and went back to town on those wheels.

She had no idea the queer effect her suggestion had on her friend, who's mind was wandering and who was now imagining himself in that vulnerable position, high up on a lift, stuck in alternate form, with his only means of locomotion dangling off the ground; but, simultaneously, having dirt picked out of every last zig and zag of his tire treads.

"Ooh, gross," Charlie had just found something on his rear door, and she leaned over and scowled. "Bee, if you ever get bird shit on you, you need that washed off before it hardens." She picked it as gently as possible with her nails.

"Wwu...?"

"Nothing eats car paint like bird crap," Charlie conversed over the music. "Fuses right to it like super glue, too. There's this new cleaning product on the market, they call it automobile clay. Supposed to be good for stuff like this. Came out just this year actually. I mean, I guess your paint is probably stronger than our paint, but still. Principle of the matter."

Bumblebee listened to her talk, humming at appropriate breaks in the conversation.

"There we go. Got it."

"Zzzzzz..."

"Okay! Try not to move much. I'm in the middle of cleaning out all four wheels as I get to them. When I'm done, I'll wipe on the tire dressing, and then when that dries, we'll have you backup half a tire and I'll do the bit that was on the ground. Got it?"

"Mnzzzz..."

She mostly finished shampooing down the car in the meanwhile, hosed it off, and passed a dry rag over it and into the gutters of places she expected a little moisture to cling. Then while he dried, she fetched a couple more buckets to make sure she was following the dilution instructions on the other chemicals. She dressed the tires, working two at a time and wiping them clean. All four tires, then a turn and some more cleaning, and then another application of dressing.

Little rough, but it'd do. If the right pH for alien rubber was different than for human rubber, _oh well, _she'd tried. And with his boots now shiny and black and (hopefully) sealing back to a factory grade finish, she went back over that dried off yellow body and started feeling with her naked fingertips for traffic film build-up.

Now it was time to degrease. Charlie hated the strong TFR her local car wash sprayed all over Ron's station wagon and never, ever, brought her Corvette there. Maybe it was lame for a girl who worked at Hank's car wash and scrap yard to be that picky.

But she wasn't there now. So she heavily diluted the traffic film remover and spot cleaned with it, only working on the parts of the car that needed it most. Took a little more elbow grease was all. Perfect. Out of the grill, away from the bumpers, off the bottom couple inches of the car. Bam, one more round of car-cleaning behind her.

Next round was super resin polish to brighten that yellow paint job up and deepen the blacks. And then after that? Sealing it.

"Wax on," she joked to herself, "wax off."

Bee surprised her by throwing on _The Moment of Truth_ by Survivor.

"You've seen that movie?" she demanded. "When, alone in the garage, or later?"

He cooed to himself and she laughed. "I'd have watched The Karate Kid with you!" Charlie jokingly practiced her crane stance, arms and foot in the air. "Ooo-aaahhh! Who's the super hero now!?"

Bee honked at her like some kind of laughing goose.

She kicked him in the tire, laughed at herself, and went back to waxing. "Hold still, hold still...!"

Having made four separate rounds of the car just for the body, and three for the wheels, one might assume the most satisfying part of cleaning and sealing the car was behind her. But no! No, now there was the matter of the inside of the Mustang, so she popped open the door to have a look. A little mud had come in at ground level but thankfully none was on the seats. The windshield could use a cleaning. There was a lot of dust.

"Nice custom leather, by the way."

"Mmmee meep."

She made a smiley face in the dust and then patted the door. "Gonna see if the shop vac's still alive or the power's running in here the same as it is under the awning. If you hear explosion, I totally started a fire, but it's technically okay because I also found the fire extinguisher and won't burn down the entire scrap yard."

"Zeee...? Ee? Charlie!"

The Mustang followed a few faltering paces after her but then had to stop lest he touch the dilapidated building. Charlie plugged the shop vac in and stood a respectable distance back before depressing the power. The machine came to life loud, healthy, and angry sounding.

"Charlie?"

"We're good!" she called back. "And I think I found some leather polish!"

The next hours went by with Charlie laying across Bumblebee's seats, vacuuming them, hosing off and cleaning the floor mats, and attacking hardening dirt with a brush so the vac could pick it up.

Once the debris was gone and the glass was all cleaned, she juggled three different sets of polish and a separate rag for each of them, keeping them straight by draping them over her arm in a certain order. She did the console and dashboard and wheel. Then she took care of the seats, working from the far side to the near, and slowly easing herself out of the vehicle. She was so engrossed in the work, and in working the right amount of polish into every seam, she didn't notice as the radio slowly petered off and went quiet.

"Gonna stink of new car in here tonight," she joked, but didn't get a reaction. "Bee?" The lights on his console were off.

Somebody had fallen asleep?

Charlie started laughing at him and accidentally woke him back up. "I think early dinner and bedtime sound nice. You?"

Bee made bashful noises of agreement.

"Almost done," she promised, taking one last careful eyeball at everything inside the car, and then walking around it from the outside to be sure she hadn't missed anything.

"Pop your hood," she called with a gentle knock, and he obeyed. She ducked under and checked the oil, rubbing the dipstick against a rag and plunging it back in to check it's height when the car was level. Oil was good. She checked the transmission, which was was low, pink, and smelled, so she changed it. She checked the power steering, also low, but no contaminants in it. Radiator fluid was good...

"Holy crap, Bee, how are you even moving your wheels back and forward?"

"Meep?"

"I've never seen power steering fluid so bad. Does that hurt or anything? Turning left and right?"

Bee made a high pitched 'Ooooooooooooooo' like something about his wheels had been bothering him for weeks but he'd just blithely ignored it.

"Looks like regardless of how you're 'imitating' our cars, you can still make backwards-compatible use of some of the same things. Either that or humans already have a decent recipe for what ideal power steering fluid's supposed to be made of. Air conditioner's fine. Brake fluid's.... fine yeah if your brakes were low, I was going to go get Ratchet to lob a wrench at you. "

"Meep!"

Charlie found barely enough power steering fluid left over at the bottom of one bottle to give the Mustang, but it would have to do for now. "If you feel this leaking," she warned him as she drizzled a bit in. "Say something, because it's all we have."

Bee waited thoughtfully.

"We good?"

"Beep-beep!"

"Goooddd," she dumped the rest in, and then closed off the reservoir and pulled the down hood and pressed it into place. "I always save the windshield for last," she conspired to that beautiful yellow gloss. After cleaning the headlights and mirrors, side and rear windows, there was something so satisfying about dragging the squeegee across the glass at the front of the car, pulling the fluid away and leaving behind that beautiful, clear, streak-free result. "Thheerrrreee we gooo...." Charlie admired the left side of the windshield, then the right, and then stood back to admire one hell of a handsome custom '86 Mustang. She pretended to be Italian and to be studying a masterpiece, and she kissed her hand. "Perfect."

Bee perked up slowly on his shocks and seemed to admire himself. He turned his wheels left, then right, like a person twisting in each direction to admire themselves in a mirror.

"How do you feel?" she laughed, stretching her arms up above her head and then dropping her hands on her hips. How long had they been gone? Did the others know where to find them? "You look like someone just drove you off a showroom floor."

He puffed up and his engine roared. Charlie laughed. He eased himself out of park and made a slow, tight circle around her; acting either like a sheep dog or maybe like he was just trying to catch and inspect his own tail.

VROOOMM! VROOM VROOM!

"Hell yeah," she laughed. "You know you're the sexiest car on the planet."

VROOM! Bee agreed, bouncing around on his wheels like a boxer before a fight. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVROOM!

His door flew open and he backed up and closed it on her! Charlie saw it coming just in time, ducking and falling into the driver's seat. Bee closed the door, the stick shift switched of it's own accord, and then they—surprisingly slowly—turned out of the scrap yard.

"♫ Cleaaannn, the cleanest I've been...! ♫"

"Bumblebee, what are you-?" It took her until they got to the main road to realize he wanted to _stay_ clean and was going nice and slow on dirt and scrap roads so as not to kick up any more muck. When they finally hit the pavement, he took off full speed into the setting sun—this time with her on board.

_♫ An end to the tears_  
_ And the in-between years_  
_ And the troubles I've seen_  
_ Now that I'm clean_  
_ You know what I mean... ♫_

Charlie leaned back in the seat and dropped her hand on the power windows to open them. She untied her hair and shook it out and closed her eyes to relax in the wind. Bee opened every window in the car, and leaned the driver seat back a few degrees for her. Charlie realized he wanted her to relax.

"Don't you dare get us in trouble while I'm not looking for six seconds, kay?"

PrrrrrOOOMM....

_♫ I don't understand_  
_ What destiny's planned_  
_ I'm starting to grasp_  
_ What is in my own hands_  
_ I don't claim to know_  
_ Where my holiness goes_  
_ I just know that I like_  
_ What is starting to show ♫_

She grinned, and the smile stayed as darker song lyrics than Bumblebee typically liked, and their sci-fi tone color, washed the inside of the Mustang.

"Love you, too, Bee."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that last piece: [Clean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1mD-_DKHc0&feature=youtu.be) \- Depeche Mode.
> 
> 1\. Charlie whispering about how beautiful Bee is into his finish as she closes his hood is making me happy.  
2\. Knockout glances briefly up from admiring his nails, glances over chapter, considers, gives curt nod approval, goes back to his nails.  
3\. Hotrod sulks in the corner, tailfin quivering with jealousy, mumbling something like, 'But I'm the sexiest car on the planet...'


	24. Only Yesterday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs used in this chapter: Only Yesterday \- The Carpenters

They stopped just after dusk alongside a highway with barely any human life to speak of. There was a tire shop, a fast food joint, and a gas station specializing in truckers where most of the pumps were diesel.

"Are we getting me food?" Charlie vaguely remembered asking for that. Bee played a soft affirmative over the radio, and headed into the McDonalds' parking lot. They pulled around up beside the illuminated drive-thru menu. 

"Hi... Welcome to McDonalds, mumbled a voice as dead as Charlie at a boardwalk hot dog stand. "May I take your order?"

"Big Mac meal, everything on it." She wiped sleep from her face. "Supersize it. Coke, Pepsi, whatever. Tack on a fudge sundae."

She fished around for money, and for a second Bee worried he ought to have planned this better; it turned out Charlie was way ahead of him and must have transferred her things from her muddy clothes to this new set, because she had a wad of green paper bills on her. When she got her change back she almost dropped it in one of his ash trays for safe keeping, before changing her mind and slotting it into something under the window. 

"It's a charity donation box," she said simply. "For kids with cancer, I think."

Did she know he could hold onto stuff for her in his subspace when he transformed? Probably not, but charities for kids sounded important anyway. Come to think of it, he probably still had like a hundred quarters from his time living with Sam. Somewhere. _Freeway tolls, ugh! _

* * *

Bee took Charlie to the gas station afterwards because he wanted her to go inside and stock up on long term provisions. Instead she took the wheel from him and pulled them into a pump. Bee didn't resist. He was embarrassed to say the smells of gasoline on the pavement were making his insides gurgle. When was the last time he'd had a cube of energon? Didn't matter; human-refined oils came in a lot of flavors, from tangy sweet gasoline to the savory, smokey flavor of kerosene.

Charlie left her paper bag of food unopened on the console, and got out asking, "Normal or high octane? Point a mirror. Or, huh, wait, you can't read..."

Bee couldn’t see the pump console very well from this angle, but he fanned out a mirror towards the green label, and waited hopefully.

"You want diesel? You sure? That'd kill a normal engine; you know that, right?"

_Yes please, it tastes delicious._ Bee played, "♫ It's alriighht! ♫" to confirm. 

Charlie lifted up the green pump and walked back along his flank. He popped his gas cap off and eagerly awaited the touch of that fragrant metal tip. The nozzle skirted his tank valve and then plunged in, and Charlie depressed the trigger to start the flow of fuel. It came crashing into his hungry tank in fast, hard pumps. Deep inside, he felt the area just beneath his Spark warm up responsively to prepare for energon synthesis.

_Awwww yaaaasssss... Wow! Been running on fumes for awhile, I guess. Not, heh, not the best plan when I still need all the fuel I can get for healing... _

Charlie crashed back into the front seat to unwrap her sandwich and take a big bite. "God, that's good," she sighed, and Bee played her voice back at her to agree. "Leather polish, gasoline, and McDonalds," she snickered, "just need cigarettes and we'll have all four classic stinky car smells."

Bee chirruped but couldn't find the energy to be embarrassed about his potentially offensive odors, because his belly was filling up to the brim right now, and he was enjoying every thirsty gulp of it. 

Charlie got back out when the refuel was done, gently removed the pump, and screwed the gas cap back into place. She shut the lid and drove them both over to the station itself to pay and pick out some more portable foods. When she came back out she had a grocery bag over her shoulder and two big plastic gas jugs, one in each hand. Bee complained she was supposed to be getting stuff for herself. She was the one who had to eat multiple times, every single day! Bee was way, way, way more fuel efficient than she was!

"It's for the guys," she whispered to him. "C'mon Bee, twenty gallons for four people is not splurging."

_Eep,_ that was true. Bee thought guiltily about how much attention everyone else _hadn't_ gotten the last couple hours.

She came around his back and he popped the trunk for her to fit everything inside. "And I got some power steering fluid."

_Hee._ Okay, Bumblebee smugly enjoyed her thinking about him like that. He let her close his trunk back up, and waited for her to slip in the driver's seat. They pulled out of the gas station with her driving, and he only retook the wheel once they were on the open road.

She went back to that towering sandwich of hers, and was already stifling yawns. He switched his radio dial around till he found some soothing low key music, and played The Carpenters.

_♫ Only yesterday when I was sad and I was lonely_  
_ You showed me the way to leave the past and all its tears behind me_  
_ Tomorrow maybe even brighter than today_  
_ Since I threw my sadness away—_  
_ Only yesterday... ♫ _

Charlie ate her fries and licked salt and ketchup from each delicate finger. She got to the black and white confection saved for last, and a drop of it, white and cold, landed on his seat.

"Oops. Damn. Sorry Bee," she scooped it up on her finger and licked it. "Right after all the work... There! Now no one will ever know."

Bumblebee pretended to be mortally wounded, dramatically waving his windshield wipers and swerving slightly. Ice cream went splashing.

"Bee!"

"Bzeeep-beep!" Buahahah! "Ss-s-sszzz-zz-zz!"

She swatted the console and he wailed playfully.

_♫ Only yesterday when I was sad and I was lonely... ♫ _

* * *

About an hour after sunset, a delinquent tires crept back gingerly into the scrap yard. They found the parked corvette and quietly slid up alongside it. Louder, by far, was the sound of car doors opening and shutting.

Then the Mustang turned and slid into the center of the yard, where more than one annoyed expression was waiting for him.

"Disappearing while we ought to be planning our next move, right after a potentially revealing skirmish?" Dino growled.

Ironhide was a little more willing to let the absence slide. Bee was the lowest on energon of anyone but Ratchet, and he also happened to be the mastermind behind the rescue. To her, having some pint-sized emotional support show up was more booster fuel than distraction.

Jazz's annoyance twisted to confusion, and suddenly Ironhide and Dino could both see why: Newly blacked tires and crisply contrasting paint slid into the range of their headlamps.

"Bee," Jazz wondered, "wh-what the Smelting Pits did...?"

Three Autobots fell silent and stared. Dino's head tilted thirty degrees. Ironhide's brows peaked. Jazz's lower jaw drooped.

A beautiful muscle car idled along under their noses, glistening as bright as polished silver, as shiny and slick as the day the alternate form had first been scanned. It crept up to the mouth of the awning, rolled quietly inside, and idled comfortably up to its usual spot. Ratchet glanced up at the sound of the parking brake.

'I'm putting myself in early recharge tonight,' Bumblebee messaged them. 'Sorry I bailed, guys. I'll make it up to you tomorrow. I know I've been all over the place all week.'

Dino couldn't successfully articulate his displeasure, maybe because he was, deep down, jealous. Jazz wasn't anywhere near as tight-wadded and was absolutely and unabashed jealous:

"What in the name of Primus' great big shiny aft did you do!?" Jazz exploded at the top of his synth. He probably would have run in to gawk, whistle, complain, whine, compliment, and ask a thousand questions that probably weren't going to get answered—so instead Ironhide grabbed him by the scruff, shook him out, and shook her head.

"Early recharge sounds like a good idea," she growled. "'Less you want Ratchet chasing you out of there for making a fuss when he's trying to work?"

Jazz gulped.

Ironhide heard a transformation behind herself, and turned to see Dino's tail fin disappearing into the night. Most probably he was irate and unable or unwilling to talk. Ironhide scowled and shook her head. _See._ This was why she wasn’t mad at B. This was everyone right now. She checked in on Ratchet, caught his eye, and gestured with her chin at Bumblebee.

"He is already down to just seventeen percent consciousness," their medic approved.

"Hnh." Youngins were rarely the ones to turn in early. "You gonna keep working for a few hours?"

* * *

Bumblebee drifted in and out, mind idle, following the whorls Charlie was drawing with her fingers on his cushions. Her toes walked up the inside of the door and curled on the handle.

The casual, light little touches... they kept his attention roving around after them. Distantly, he wanted to pinch up one of her tiny pedes to admire it, to echo their pleasant, purposeless touch; but he was much too comfortable to move, and he didn't want to deny her the seat she was reclining on. He wondered why she couldn't sleep.

Was she at least relaxing, like he was? He felt nice and full and heavy right now. He'd needed that tank of fuel. Was she maybe just thinking about things she'd left behind? Bee could relate to that.

_Do I really smell that bad? Cause I can run the air vents all night if you'd like...?_

Charlie spread out an arm suddenly. She felt up along the top of the seat, and then under it with her opposite hand. She found the lever she wanted, manipulated it to release the seat back, and then pulled that down towards herself like she was trying to open up more trunk space.

Bee perked up in surprise, lifting the seat back up again out of reflex. Then, realizing what she might want, he let the seat back sag back down to lay over top of her, squishing her lightly between top and bottom cushions.

_That okay?_

Charlie seemed satisfied with the 'hug.' She twisted around to lay on her side and made herself more comfortable. She stopped drawing whorls, and he followed her off to 'sleep' this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bee, I realize you don't know what you just did, but it was hilarious and obscene and fan servicey and we loved every minute of it. We're also getting minor, traumatized flashbacks to Kiss Players, but don't worry, we're all mature enough to appreciate the difference. What? No! Screw you Yuki Ohshima. Go off in a corner and keep your Lolicons off Optimus, sheesh, he's suffered enough!


	25. Solid Foods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Bee's first transformation sequence in Bumblebee (2018) where we get a close up of his face mid transformation...

Breakfast for Charlie was a box of blueberry muffins and free tickets to the realization robots could eat solid foods.

The four standing Autobots had gathered around some kind of primitive kiln. Jazz had dug it out with his hands about an hour before, stuffed it full of the very last things Charlie or any other human would have picked to burn, like rubber, and then set it ablaze with his plasma cannon. She'd kept a good respectful distance back, explaining to Bee the fumes were most probably bad for her health.

At first she hadn't been entirely clear on the purpose of the kiln. Jazz had been arranging garbage in strangely aesthetic little piles on a thick piece of a steel. He'd filled a makeshift crucible with scrap plastic and gingerly fed the result into the fire. Charlie'd drawn blanks until Jazz had started stirring it. Then she'd realized Jazz was cooking, and she'd sat up and paid attention.

Charlie had no cooking skills, but she had worked in a scrap yard, and so she did know a thing or two about _recycling._ Take plastics for instance, plastics were a bitch. There were about ten major different types, each of which required a processing plant your state might not even _have_. Every single piece had to be cleaned and sorted perfectly only with identical matches. One difference in dye, additive, or the original factory's production process, and the two resulting plastics couldn't be mixed. A single mismatch in a batch of hundreds of bottles could ruin the whole thing. Even correctly recycled plastic got weaker and more brittle every time you melted it down.

All this scrapyard wisdom stood at odds with Jazz's first 'dish,' which came out as a gross, bubbling bowl multicolored plastic, browned in places and raw and chunky in others. From Charlie's perspective, this had just rendered every useful property of plastic void. All she could think was_ what a mess._

Then Jazz lifted it to his mouth and took a big gulp. He grinned at the result like he was pleasantly surprised, and offered the rest of the bowl up to Ironhide.

Bam, it hit Charlie: This was a soup. It looked no weirder than Charlie's New England Clam Chowder, except for the part where it had some exciting blues and greens in it and was a little bit hotter.

And Jazz kept working! He laid out flakes of iron he'd collected, apparently choosing the most brittle and oxidized metal he could find, that had broken off in wafers. He melted layers of plastic and rubber over this until they glued the flakes together, and then sprinkled on very small screws, bolts, rivets, and nuts.

Robot pizza? Chocolate eclairs? Something with flaky crust?

He melted some materials down into oil, introduced a bunch of iron dust and other crushed materials until it was saturated so heavily he could pick it up like dough and repeatedly fold and knead it. When he put into the kiln he'd done something no sane human would ever do with polymer: he'd introduced thousands and thousands of air bubbles, which caused the material to blow up into a tangled mess. But as it settled down, it was obvious what its analog was:

Bread. Bread had air bubbles in it that poofed up during heating to make it light and fluffy. That was what Jazz had done: he'd made the food light and fluffy. Ready for a slathering of grease on it just as soon as it had cooled down.

Everything about this made perfect sense. Human food wasn't designed for structural integrity, and you didn't want to build with bread unless maybe it was baguettes, something dense with as little air as possible, and then only as some kind of publicity stunt. So for robots, 'destroying' plastic just changed the texture or taste or—like toasting—made it more digestible.

And didn't it make sense that robots would _need_ to eat something to replenish all the metal, plastic, and explosive materials they lost while fighting each other? New rockets had to come from somewhere! The transformers had to put on new material somehow, so it was either _this_ or spot welding random pieces of trash to themselves to absorb it all through their 'skin.'

_Oh man, cool. _

Charlie now regretted Jazz was burning rubber instead of wood. She was so engrossed watching the process from afar that she almost didn't notice Bumblebee cross her line of vision to join the others. He had one of the gas cans she'd bought yesterday, and them all 'cups' of gas using whatever cup-sized appliances had been most readily available. Everyone gave murmurs of approval.

_Heh._

Charlie briefly took note of broad yellow shoulders, but then did a double-take as Jazz passed Bumblebee one of those flaky robot pizza eclairs... because Bee _took_ it. Bee. Who had no real visible mouth. _That _Bee.

Jumping out of her food-fascinated daze, Charlie abandoned her remaining muffins to get her butt over there and have a look. Thankfully the kiln's smoke plume was billowing in a different direction. Charlie eyed it to make sure it'd stay that way, and then looked up at Bee—

The circular, grill-like structure that typically dominated his 'mouth' was actually some kind of mouth guard or ventilator. It had folded away, and the four triangular pieces of metal which typically locked it in place were now spread like short blunt teeth atop a lipless maw. A metal tube protruded between them, and, when he bit down on his food, the central tube stabbed it like a mosquito to suck out the insides.

Charlie. Screamed.

Bee nearly leaped out of his armor, tossed the food into the air, caught it, hugged it to himself, and swung around to gape at her in confusion.

Charlie took one last horrified gander at mandibles and mouth parts that looked right at home on a crab, spider, or insect. Then she spun away, covering her face and shouting, "Sorry! I'm—It's nothing—Just having flashbacks to The Fly—that's all!"

"Did she just freak out at his face!?" realized Jazz.

"Of course she did," Dino retorted. "It doesn't look like hers. These humans don't have much variety in their make and model, and do not seem to interbreed with their fellow organics."

"With our fellow—?" Charlie sputtered, wondering how anyone would expect humans and insectsto procreate. 

"Bwwwe!?" Bee whimpered.

"That weren't polite," Ironhide growled gently from overhead.

"I-I know, I know!" Charlie sputtered.

"Yeah, in the immortal words of Knockout," Jazz pouted:_ "Rude."_

"We're quoting Decepticons now?"

"Hey, Knocks is technically mostly sort of unaffiliated. Kinda."

Charlie didn't need to be a Cybertronian to know you couldn't freak out at the sight of other people's faces, regardless of what kind of mouth parts they'd been fitted with, and especially not when those people were your friends."Bee, I'm—" she tried to apologize, but karma decided she deserved a dose of lung cancer, and sent the wind and kiln smoke wrapping around Dino and Ironhide to poison her. Coughing, Charlie quickly retreated away from the fine.

_Nice job, Charlie. Way to start off the day._ She looked back from a safe distance to see poor Bumblebee hunched over, antenna down, self-consciously covering his face with a hand as he 'ate.' Jazz was trying to reassure him that he was normal and that humans didn't know what they were talking about.

Charlie smeared a hand over her face and looked guiltily away. Between Ironhide's rough metal jaws and Jazz and Ratchet's extremely human faces, Charlie hadn't been expecting mouth parts that might remind her of a l_iteral bumblebee_. Even Dino, whose real face she was seeing for the first time this morning, had dainty, slender jaws that chewed and swallowed food the normal way. She was vaguely reminded of a goat or... maybe of an actual dinosaur, but that was several orders of magnitude more 'normal' than sucking out the insides of one's food out by _pipe. _

Bee glanced pitifully back over his shoulder at her. He was _still_ covering the lower half of his face, and his eyes were wide and soulful.

_I think I just traumatized my giant robot BFF into thinking he's ugly._

Charlie wished she had antennas so she could flatten them down and signal this was all her fault. She settled for a partial face-palm while mouthing 'I'm sorry.'

Poor Bee. She'd have to apologize to him later in the day, when she'd figured out how not to panic at the sight of him. _Deep breaths, Charlie. It's... it's not as bad as it seems. It's more surprising than anything. It's fine. _

_Really. _

_He just bites into things, injects a corrosive enzyme, and sucks the slurry out. Probably._

_No big deal. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically also inspired by that time Bee 'cries' Sam isn't bringing him to college, and what appear to be mandibles extend out of his cheeks with a SHING and then squirt goodness only knows what clear liquid everywhere pretending it's tears. It's now officially digestive solvent. 
> 
> Because if you're not going to give a character a visible mouth, you might as well have some fun with it.


	26. C'mon Old Bot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs used by Bee:
> 
> [You're My Best Friend](https://youtu.be/HaZpZQG2z10)

The majority of the day was spent discussing their options for travel.

Charlie didn't know any of the variables involved, from where exactly they were going, to who they had to meet, to what challenges they expected to run into along the way. But nobody had recruited her to this team for her skill in logistics, so her ignorance wasn't a big problem. Everyone but her was an experienced robot-in-disguise who'd been doing this for years.

It seemed wiser for Charlie to head back in under the awning and glue herself to Ratchet. That way she'd be sinking all her time, effort, and games of twenty questions into skill-building.

"Hey old man," she called, hopping up beside him. "What's the lesson plan for today?"

Ratchet snorted indignantly, but still summoned her up onto his knee. His internal motors were less gunked up with tar than they'd been the previous two days.

"I want to see you weld something _simple_," he allowed, before handing her the torch and directing her to a hole in his plates, "that way I can determine exactly how much remedial work I'll be saddled with later on..."

She reached for the welder. "Sure thing, Doc."

"_Nyep-nyep-nyep._" He temporarily withheld the welder, and warned her with an index finger. "Do _not_ call me 'Doc.'"

"Yes your royal highness and most magnificent master of the healing arts," she grabbed it away from him.

He huffed and mimed smacking someone bigger than her upside the head, but there was this energetic liveliness about his actions, like he was in a good mood and immune to annoyance.

Heh! Good, he was feeling better. There was definitely a from of victory in getting each half-smirk and back-handed complement from him. Yeah, he was a grump. A sarcastic, temperamental, under-appreciated old grouch. But embedded under that was a second set of messages, if you knew what to look for.

Real assholes didn't apologize. Didn't chicken out at shooting stray organics just because they were holding questionably valuable wrenches. And definitely didn't ask for you to sit still on their upraised knee so they could see the bump on your head from prior wrench-related mishap all just to make sure things were healing admirably.

Ratchet was as gentle as Bee in pushing her hair out of the way with two massive thumbs and then, after a quick look at the little wound up there, told her she needed to buy some alkaline grooming solvent for herself enroute to their next destination, because,

"The sebaceous secretions of your pores have built up on the keratin shafts at least a standard deviation beyond your species' normal social tolerance parameters."

Charlie's eyes briefly crossed. "So my hair's greasy?"

"That is one way of putting it."

"...Thanks, mom."

Ratchet made a flustered sneeze, grimaced at something clearly only he understood, eventually rolled his eyes and then set her carefully back down. "Here. Work on this."

"Got a question, actually. I know the purple you've been leaking is energon—the blood version of energon. But you're covered in a mess of colors. Like what’s the green stuff?.

"Hmm? Oh, useful visual guides for evaluating a wound with no scanner... Very well: Green or teal is usually from the respiratory and digestive system, which are interrelated. Our bodies are adaptive. We can breathe most reactive atmospheric gasses—anything that isn't a noble gas—and use them to enhance energon synthesis. I replaced my fuel synthesizer—none of these are fresh."

"What all _can_ you eat?"

"That would require an answer you lack the primer for. Could you explain all the ingredients in a hamburger down to their molecular forms for any random alien's curiosity?"

"Uh, well we eat carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and a lot of trace vitamins and minerals."

"That—Hmm!" Ratchet was caught. "_How_ did you do that?"

"It's printed in the side of cereal boxes. On most of our food, but super obviously on cereal boxes. Sometimes it's the only thing to read while eating breakfast."

Ratchet made a 'not bad' grimace that probably ought to be interpreted as praise for her entire species, but ultimately kept things simple for her: "We need to eat enough material to repair ourselves, but because we do not have _cells_ we are not constantly in a state of life, death, disposal, and rebirth. When something is healing, we need, obviously, iron; traces of other minerals and metals; high quality silicas for neutral, sensory, and motor circuitry; hydrocarbon chains, preferably silicones...

"Even while not injured, we need a source of energy. And we can eat a variety of liquid combustible fuels. For instance: Gasoline." He lifted a cup at his side, but she noticed he only took the tiniest of sips from it. Nobody had brought him any solid foods from the cooking frenzy outside either, even though he was the one healing.

"Eating too much on a new stomach not good for you?" Charlie reasoned.

Ratchet made a grumbling noise, before adding, "When humans purge, you bring up a lot of digestive enzymes. That is similar to us if a solid food disagrees with us. But when we purge live fuel, it is usually_ on fire._"

"Oh!" Charlie slapped a hand over her face, grinning hard, because that sounded painful and sort of funny. "I see. So: petroleum products. Presumably cooking oils. Alcohol?"

"Yes, though mileage varies. And _no_ solid fuels," Ratchet shuddered. "That's a rule of thumb, not a law, but it's good enough for now! Coal, your species' primary source of electrical power—oh, it's not that we _can't_ eat it, it's that it's extremely bad for the entire respiratory system, and cakes the interior surfaces in layers of tarry, black _scum,_ and only certain very highly specialized forms are built able to consume it. Mostly slow moving, ponderous, long distance, freight-hauling morphs, although I can also think of a few Maximals... Nothing that's landed on Earth, to my knowledge!"

"_Yuck, _sounds like what happens to us with tobacco or miner's lung."

"That—" he seemed to review some internal encyclopedia, "That is a _perfect _analog, except imagine that your lung and your stomach and intestine were all more or less the same thing, and it was coating all of it."

"_Bleck_. Now I have the idea it's like constantly having the taste of cigarette smoke in your mouth, and it's horrible."

* * *

Around noon, when Charlie was eating precooked ballpark franks by spearing them in a car antenna and roasting them over a Ratchet-induced mini-fire, she watched the medic pause in his self ministrations and cock his head like he was listening to something. An amused expression tugged his face. He went back to work.

"What?" she volunteered to be insulted; by now she was pretty sure he insulted more out of habit than any ill will.

"Bumblebee is asking me for an explanation of your reaction at 'breakfast.'"

Charlie groaned. "I freaked out."

"I know. I heard you from here." He sounded so damn smug about that.

"W-well what did you tell him?" Shit, Charlie had been planning to apologize later, when she might get a few minutes with Bee to herself.

Ratchet shot a cruel little expression her way, and Charlie feared the worst. "I told him not to worry, that humans simply have a phobia towards small, organic parasites which try to suck out their vital fluids. Similar to our aversion to scraplets."

"Ratchet..." Charlie wished _she_ had a wrench right now. "I didn't even get a real chance to apologize to him yet..."

Their medic laughed unsympathetically. "I'm not worried about the self confidence of a mecha who's been waving his paint in everyone's face like he's Hot Rod all morning."

"Yeah, well, you're not the one who's supposed to have his back," Charlie growled, thinking back to just yesterday.

"Mnn, about that: May I ask how he came to have the level of finish in just a few hours?"

"No. No you may not, Ratchet, and there go my plans of maybe coming over there and helping you buff yourself out in the near future, not unless you want to listen to an elaborate lecture of how humans maintain their sebaceous secretions for at least an hour ahead of time a some kind of penance." Charlie pivoted around and raised her voice to carry. She lifted her hands to either side of her mouth. "Bee!?"

"Zzzwuuwee?" she heard at a distance.

"Don't listen to Ratchet, he's a jerkwad! I'm sorry, and your face is beautiful the way it is, okay!?!"

Silence answered her for a moment, and then she got an unexpectedly upbeat, "♫You're my best friend; Ooh, you make me live! Whenever this world is cruel to me!♫"

Bee's forgiveness and some well placed _Queen_ put Charlie's mood back to rights.

When she finished her hotdogs, she eyeballed Ratchet over there with his fingers splayed around one of his torso injuries, delicately soldering circuitry from a transplant to his own power lines.

Charlie left the awning without a word, grudgingly fetched a step ladder she'd found in the barn, and carried it back all the way up beside their medic so that she'd never have to ask him to stop working or pick her up. He glanced briefly at her as she climbed it. She balanced at the top, took a damp rag from her pocket, and reached past his shoulder.

The rag touched the corner of his mouth, dabbing away old streaks of purple and motor oil. Away from his lips, and from the curve of his chin. The streaks were stubborn, but she had a little TFR solution on the rag.

Soldering activity eased to silence. Ratchet's face drifted quietly her way.

Charlie overturned the rag to expose a purple-free corner, and reached past to dab the far side of his mouth.

Ratchet had already explained that this purple color was caused by a substance called 'energon,'and that it was both the Cybertronian's native fuel source and, somehow, also their preferred foodstuff. A translucent buffer fluid carried traces of it around the body like a circulatory system. Near the core it would light up with their spark color—typically whatever their eye color happened to be.

But black fluid (like these accompanying oil stains) was usually one of several types of joint lubricant, and most internal lubricants could be converted to tar to stopper up wounds. That was what had gunked up Ratchet's motors the past two days, and it was also the case with a couple bullet wounds that had torn Ratchet's cheek, where hard tar now held soft silicone together in a spiderweb.

Grr. The energon had come right off, but the oil stains were being stubborn.

There!

Charlie dabbed gently at his wounded cheek and then stepped one rung higher on her ladder and wiped away a tell-tale splash of motor oil across his nose and brow.

Then she leaned back to admire her handiwork. Left side good? Right? Blue eyes waxed open again to stare quietly at her.

"There." she tucked her rag away and climbed back down her ladder. "I was thinking about what you said about patches as camouflage."

"...And?"

"Depending on what the plan is," she gestured towards the outside, "if we need to sneak you cross country, the most natural method is going to be to put you up on a flat bed like you're a normal delivery. But no one tows a car with a broken axle down to three wheels long distance. It's not secure. It'll look distinctive."

"You are suggesting to hide the damage."

Charlie bobbed her head. "If there's time, we could reserve maybe a day before we head out to pretty you back up?"

"Introducing native metal for cosmetic purposes will slow down much needed healing in other areas..." 

"Right, so I'm not suggesting we do it to last. We don't even have to make sure it can transform properly. What I can do is spot weld a wheel well back onto you. That way when we get where we're going, you can snap it right back off. The new axel's going to slow down your healing, too, right? Too big and nonessential? So someone else—"

"—Can carry my real axel, and we can temporarily swap it back into place when we arrive, to help my healing protocols re-prioritize critical systems..."

"That's it," Charlie agreed. "I even found white paint and a spray gun. Haven't tested it yet, so might be rusted shut, but," she shrugged, "worth a try?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red Aston Martin screeches onto the scene, Knockout transforms, "DID I HEAR SOMEONE SAY THEY NEED TO BE PAINTED!?"
> 
> Charlie "Just white. Like a boring delivery truck."
> 
> Knockout ".... What if I told you I have ultraviolet white paint that will glow in the right lighting."
> 
> Charlie "..."
> 
> Knockout "And a stencil for 'Party Ambulence' and disco balls I save only for the most devious of occasions."
> 
> Charlie "............... Guys, I'm pretty sure The Devil or a near acquaintance is trying to make a deal with me and I might just need the Power of Christ or The Dynasty of Primes or, hell, _something_ to resist this one..."


	27. Second Star to the Right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and straight on till morning!
> 
> What? Technically from the human perspective, this could potentially be seen as the story of a boy who never grows old. Oh nevermind.
> 
> November shout outs to my supporters, especially TheWonderfulShoe and CMY!

After a day spent cooped up with Ratchet, the evening air blew in hard, clean, and welcome across the scrap yard and surrounding wilderness.

Charlie had been bent over transplant parts for the last four hours, struggling to understand complex instructions for how to modify delicate little energy lines. Now, standing at the entryway to the awning, she stretched backwards and side to side getting the kinks out of her back.

The sky caught her eye.

There it was above them all, opened up purpled and mottled with starlight. Charlie's eyes widened. She could barely remember the last time she'd seen the Milky Way. She'd been with her Dad at the time, on a long ago family trip to the Grand Canyon.

_Where is the moon?_ _Is it a new moon tonight?_ Charlie looked around from horizon to horizon, but there was no tell-tall halo of yellow ringing up behind any nearby mountains, because there were no nearby cities. There was no light but the stars, and they were coming through loud and clear...

Charlie looked a little closer to home, at the towers of appliances and racks of scrap. She found a rack that looked sturdy and solid, and hurried up to grab at the beams, pulling herself up first one layer... then the next... then—

"Oh?" Graphite fingers boosted her the last couple feet. "Thanks, Bee."

He murmured softly and surprised her by putting one big boot on the bottom rack. It groaned a little, but it had been built to carry cars bigger than him. Bumblebee climbed all the way up beside her and then perched his tush there on the corner. She scooted over to make some more room for him.

Charlie pointed to the sky, and Bee looked. His antenna popped up, and he looked left and right and all around with that same primitive joy she'd felt. It was nuts how similar their species could be sometimes, for having been born on completely different worlds.

"They have light pollution where you come from, too, huh?" she laughed.

"Mmmrruu," Bee agreed,  
  
"Any idea where you live?"

Interstellar navigation sounded like a specialized skill, just like medical mechanics. Bumblebee surprised her when he lifted up a hand and pointed straight at a bunch of Milky Way stars just coming up on the horizon.

Oh! Charlie hit her forehead in realization. "Of course the scout knows where he is."

Bee twittered an affirmative and bobbed his head.

"What's it like, your home?" she asked before reconsidering. "I guess I'll have to ask Ironhide."

"Uuuu..." His antenna drooped a little. He wanted to be able to talk to her as much as she wanted to listen. Borrowing another person's song here or there was great for soundbites or raw feelings, but not so great for telling someone your life's story. She was also curious what he would have sounded like, if he'd been whole. Everyone had called him 'young,' but there were a dozen different sort of voices that jumped to mind at that description.

"Maybe we should teach you to write," Charlie suggested. "I mean, in English. I'm assuming you can write your home language."

He mumbled and whirred to himself, gaze slipping down as he considered this and maybe other options. To be fair, it wasn't convenient for him to carry around paper and pencil everywhere, and even then everything would be teeny tiny in his enormous hands.

"Hey," Charlie elbowed him and he looked down at her. "When I was little my mom used to take us to church with her parents... I know you don't know what 'church' is, but bear with me. At Sunday school the teachers taught us to sing _Jesus Loves Me_ with all these cute little hand signals.

"But that's actually a language, I think, that was invented specifically for deaf people. I don't actually know it, but I could hit a book store or something later on. Like," Charlie held up a pinky finger, "I think this is 'I,' and this is," she touched her forehead, "'know,' or it's something like that."

Bee tuned in to her hand motions with widening eyes. Hoo, did they have a good solution on their hands?

Charlie thought back, signed 'I,' laid her hands across her chest, and then pointed at him.

Bumblebee perked up and then, so very slowly, he lifted up a pinky finger for 'I,' placed his hands across his chassis, and pointed back at her.

Somehow the sight of Bumblebee working through his first non-radio 'I love you' in three years was a zillion times more precious than Charlie'd imagined it could be. Maybe it was down to how much slow, dramatic care he invested in making each sign.

"See?" she cleared her throat, and smiled back at the stars. "Now you can just say it whenever you want."

They stargazed together for a bit. Bee leaned back on his hands. The air was nice; this was just a scrap yard, with no human waste and none of the stench of a landfill.

"(Dzzz)—Do you like—(vvv)—hanging around with—(bzzz)—_Ratchet?_" Bee asked.

"He needs the most help right now, right?"

"(Kvvv)—_Affirmative_."

"Well, if you promise never to tell, I find his grumpiness totally relatable and charming." She winked. "Unlike Dino's."

Bee started laughing: Staccato little buzzes with his eyes half shut. "(Mnn)—What did—_yo, Dino!_—(bzznn)—say to you?"

"Oh," Charlie waved it away. "Something about that Witwicky family—the one that's always in the news around you guys—and about me being a 'replacement.' He was trying to make me jealous or sad or something."

Bee looked sharply at her and then glared angrily across the scrap yard.

"I honestly couldn't blame any kid on this earth for finding you all fantastic." Charlie waved a hand. "Do you know they make toys of you, now?"

"Mwuwuu!!?" Bee looked down at her, eyes widening.

"Yup. They call them 'Transformers.' Kids are obsessed with them. The toy company, Hasbro, clearly didn't know much about you guys but that didn't stop them from churning out every color and shape they could dream of. Blew Gobots out of the picture, that's for sure. Otis has a Bumblebee action figure. It's built like a barrel with legs, and they thought your antenna were _horns._"

"Woo..." Bumblebee looked blown away by this revelation. '_I'm an action figure...?!'_ might as well have been said aloud.

Charlie smirked, sighed, and flopped back to just enjoy the bigness of the universe. Bee slid back on his elbows, but she had a feeling he was watching her, instead.

"Makes it ten times as messed up what we did to Ratchet, doesn't it?" she asked after a personally bitter quiet.

"_Charlie_—You didn't do—(bzzz)—_Anything!_—to—(rrr)—Ratchet."

"Humans did," she muttered. "Where was I when they were doing it, huh? Fixing boats and salvaging old cars? How's that important?"

"You—(zzzt)—Education—"

"Screw education! I freaked out, Bee." She rubbed at her face. "The news was reporting some 'brave men and women' had taken down another evil robot, whoopdidoo, but then suddenly there was this tacky tabloid no one ever reads, and it had a picture of Ratchet being gunned down by people.

"The whole way here, that image was following me on every newspaper I walked by, on every TV; _shit_ Bee, all I could think about is what if it had been you, what if it was you, what if it had already happened a long time ago, and you were dead, and it was my _fault_ again, my fault for not being there, and I was going to end up following that tracker to—"

A giant hand passed over her, then an elbow, and then Bumblebee was curling around her spot on the rack, with his knees bumping her feet and his fingers coaxing her up against his neck.

"I'm—okay—Charlie."

She rolled into him and onto that offered neck. And when she could breathe she said, "I need to help fix him. Ratchet? I need to help him. It could have been you."

Bumblebee's thumb swept over her head and down her shoulder and back. "Your—Education—helping."

"What?" She smeared a hand over her face.

"Charlie—(zzz)—not too late. _Mmnnvv mvv._ Right on time."

Her insides knotted up, and everything that could have happened while she'd been turned the wrong direction kept swirling, pulling down the muscles of her face into a grimace, till it had squeezed the sobs out of her, and she was cracking and crying and shaking.

She didn't just want a hug. Charlie wormed an arm free to grope greedily over the smooth rubber of his throat, following the fuel line and each sturdy metal vertebrae, and the amazing alien realness under her hands: As mundane and sturdy as a car, but with this twitching, breathing pulse.

_You're real. You're all real. You exist in a place outside of my memories._

Bee laid there, hands closed loosely around her, holding her like a child might hold a pet. Two fingers followed the curve of her back up and down.

Maybe he was thinking the same things as her. Maybe she was as crazily unreal to him as he was to her...

Charlie ducked her head and pressed her forehead into the smooth cool metal of his shoulder, breathing deep and shaky. She sighed out her tremors long and hard. And when she could move again, she slowly propped herself up.  
  
Bee didn't move. He watched her from the corner of his eye, leaving her the length of his neck open in case she wanted to collapse there again. She sort of did. She sort of sat against him, or leaned. But, this time, Charlie touched purposefully at his face. She got one hand under his jaw and around to the far side, to cup his features.

Carefully, she walked both hands along the plates of his vow and eyelids, and smoothed her palms down the armor of his cheeks, admiring each groove, feeling the micro movements of each blink and expression. With one hand she traced down the short sharp angle of his nasal ridge, and up over the Autobot crest on his forehead.

One big blue eye shut reflexively as her forearm passed near. His forefinger smoothed down the side of her hair, and swept under her chin. The other fingers stayed loosely around her, brushing in soft, small ways.

"...Will you show me your mouth again, Bee?"

Both eyes blinked open again and widened a little. His expression tilted from relaxed to unsure. He tried to give a little shake of his head without squishing any of her fingers.

"I won't scream," she promised, leaning over his head. "Please?"

His expression got really insecure. His attention darted around and his antenna bobbed like he couldn't tell whether to put them at the right setting for 'alarmed' or 'meek.' She felt gears shift underneath her and wondered if he was going to try and get up and escape.

"Bumblebee, I freaked out at you the first time I ever saw you," she argued. "How long did it take me to chill after that, huh?"

He settled down again and thought about that.

"Please show me?"

He chewed on what she now knew was a mouth guard or ventilator. She could feel his jaw bobbing under her hand, motors flexing. Then the plates of his face unlocked, and the grill slid out and spun away.

Charlie leaned to get a better look.

The opening for his mouth was hexagonal and roughly 'right' for a cut out of a human mouth. She cupped his chin to urge him to lift his head a little. She couldn't make out any teeth, though, to be fair, it was nighttime with only the stars for illumination.

Nervously, Charlie reached near to his mouth and felt the tip of that stabby inner mouth pipe as it pushed forward to meet her. It... it felt roughly the same exact size and shape as a car's fuel valve. Maybe that made some roundabout sense.

The quiet _shhhiinnng_ of metal against metal made her snatch her fingers back. Charlie watched apprehensively as a set of curved yellow pincers slid out of his cheek anatomy. Each was tipped with a wicked hollow point fang. Clearly, yes, Bee did bite things, inject a dissolvent, and slurp them up. That was how he ate: Minimal chewing involved.

_Okay. I can do this._ Charlie touched one of the fangs, deliberately, to try and inoculate herself against any future fear of them. The appendage shied a little under her hand, like Bee was scared of touching her with anything she'd screamed over. Yeah, that made sense. But Charlie didn't let him escape this time: Her fingers followed the line of the pincer back to his jaw joint, and then up to the tip again. _It's a little more 'cool' and less 'freaked my soul temporarily out of my body' now that I know what to expect._  
  
Instead of any lips, he had four broad plates on the outside of his jaws that could move independently of each other, but which still appeared to be for biting into and holding on to something. Each had one little, blunt, triangular protrusion, a bit like a canine tooth. She was briefly reminded of a snarling cougar. That was a better mental image than an insect, honestly. Hmm.

Looking from one corner to the next, Charlie slowly laid her hands against the plates. She coaxed them closed with her fingertips, bringing the bottom two together, and then the top.

That... that was easier to look at. That almost looked like normal sets of teeth now, with a small gap between them at the center and a blunt canine in each corner.

Bumblebee must have got the jist of what she was doing, because the yellow hollowpoint fangs retracted, and he twitchily brought top mouth parts to bottom ones, easing them closed into a somewhat normal looking seam, like the gap between upper and top lip. Their motions were a little rough.

"Is that not natural for you?" she wondered. Normally all four plates/fangs were either locked down around his mouth guard or else spread out away from one another.

Bumblebee was watching her face and Charlie got the impression she was being used as a measuring stick right now, and that Bee was more interested in her reactions to his appearance than whatever was 'most natural.' Sure enough, his forefinger slipped back up over the edge of her jaw, and rested near her mouth.

"It's okay," she disagreed with his priorities. "You don't have to look like me to be awesome."

He shook his head. He didn't want to be scary.

"How much time do you think I spend in front of a mirror worrying about what I look like, huh?" Charlie asked. "Or worrying about whether other people like what they see?"

His eyes widened curiously.

Charlie held up a big fat zero with thumb and fingers. "But," she added. "You're way cuter than me, so I guess you've got to do you."

Bumblebee lost the ability to uphold a convincing human smile because the motors of his face wanted to pull his 'teeth' out wide with laughter, but the rest of his face was so expressive it compensated, and he ended up looking like an adorably gap-toothed bumblebee.

And that worked. It was charming, now that it was understood.

Charlie broke up giggling instead of grimacing, and she leaned over and smeared her hand over one of the plates to hold it still so she wouldn't pinch herself if it moved. She kissed the far corner of it. _Perfect, Bee, promise._

The plates snapped back together at the center and resumed their convincing lip seam, and Charlie got an unexpected treat when Bee lifted his cheek and smooched her right on the side of the face with them.

Charlie laughed harder, but then squealed in alarm when something wet touched her.

Bee jumped. His expression went mortified all over again.

"What was that?" Chalie demanded, and then—when she realized he was scared of his own appearance again—she muscled a hand between teeth she knew weren't willing to clamp down and bite her. She found the stabby fuel valve, okay, nothing new there....

A lubricated silicone appendage rasped over the valve and inadvertently touched her hand.

Charlie nearly leaped out of her skin but managed not to scream this time. "Oh you have a tongue," she realized as she made contact with the soft, spongy floor of his mouth. "Wait a minute, Bee, did you _lick_ me just a second ago?!"

"Bwwu?"

"Okay," Charlie grinned, "this one's my fault, I'm the one that left you home alone with the dog too many times."

* * *

Mirage cleared his throat in disgust. Ironhide shot him a tolerant glance.

"That doesn't disturb you at all?" Mirage asked, sneering at the distant junkpile rack. "He's... curling up with it like a child with a pet."

"You need more friends."

Mirage bristled, looking back to her. "The smelting pits is that supposed to mean? I have sworn brothers I've fought a thousand battles beside."

"Yeah? How many of them here now?"

"Might ask the same of you!"

"Look in case you missed it, _Dino_, we don't know when, or if we're ever getting off this rock."

"How in Primus' name could I have missed that?" Mirage hissed. "We're splintered, divided, weak. This is exactly what the humans wanted when they seduced Optimus into settling on this plan. We're easy to pick off, when we should be—"

"Only two kinds of sentient beings down here, and it's us and the locals," Ironhide growled, clearly trying to keep her voice patient. "They're who we've got to live with, our company; enemies and allies. Be it until tomorrow, or for the next eight vorn."

Mirage looked her up and down, agitated and alarmed by that remark, but unable to articulate why.

"I get exactly why you don't like humans. They're wearing thin on me, too. But they're who we're marooned with right now." Ironhide looked back down to the wheel she was fixing. "Gotta make the best of it."

"I understand that truth, uncomfortable as it is. But you don't see me going native, fawning over self-important skin jobs who think they can own us, rolling over himself to work as a transportation appliance like things were before the war—"

Ironhide lifted a hand and waved him down.

Mirage sat back to listen.

"We can get distracted by this," she muttered, "or we can focus on getting to Wheeljack."

Mirage growled. "Point made. And right now you want the human because it is allegedly of value to Ratchet?"

Ironhide paused in working, and her eyes flicked up to him. There was a glower there this time, a menace. She was silent a moment more, before asking: "Which one of us had the bearings to shoot down the highway at full clip, transmitting Calling All Autobots?"

"... Bumblebee," Mirage answered with discomfort.

"Who dared, eh? Optimus' rallying cry, in the middle of the night, when we all knew the real deal was thousands of miles away?"

The answer was obvious and also the same, so Mirage did not bother repeating it.

"In fact, who found out they were hunting us, who tapped their comms and realized they'd isolated an ambulance, eh? Who got there in the nick of time, with every Autobot he could reach hot on his tail?"

"That intelligence was from Wheeljack—"

"And who was workin with Wheeljack the whole slaggin' time we were in hidin', trying to make sure he had the latest intel, and that all of us were safe?"

Surely the answer couldn't be 'Bumblebee,' because that individual was up on a rack consorting with a dangerous and hostile alien species, despite the danger it might put all of them in.

"You ain't following me, Dino," Ironhide growled. "You're following B-127."

Mirage dropped his head, clenched his fists and said nothing.

After a few moments, he nodded his head in acknowledgement of the rebuke.

Ironhide eyed him a little longer to make sure he knew his place. Then she went back to stitching up that wheel. "He's young. Not _incompetent. _You'll get used to it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bee: Daaaaaaaad! *Rushes in, hugs OP's leg*
> 
> OP: What is the matter, my Lieutenant? Has someone upset you?
> 
> Bee: I need a face :( 
> 
> OP: ...
> 
> OP: Say no more. 
> 
> Author: Huh! I have to admit, I didn't think it was possible to work in a [ "Give me your face!" ](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/give-me-your-face) reference.
> 
> Jazz: Pssh, that one was easy, it's essentially a meme. As is exactly zero of any of my scenes or dialog. That's how you can tell something is messed up. I *invented memes.* True story, this work is set before the internet. I'll make one up right now, just watch m—
> 
> Also Jazz: Did he just say 'Dad!?'


	28. Nice Aft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Word by Bee:
> 
> [I'm Walking on Sunshine!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPUmE-tne5U) \- Katrina & The Waves - Walking On Sunshine (Official Video)
> 
> [San Francisco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I0vkKy504U) \- Scott McKenzie

Charlie was getting used to sleeping in Bumblebee's back seat. 

It was almost exactly like sleeping on any car's back seat: Too small to stretch your legs out, seatbelts got in the way, weird angle, no sheets, no pillow, and your skin always stuck awkwardly to the leather. Which was all to say there was no big give-away that a giant robot was folded away underneath. If she traced the seat upholstery long enough, though, Bee would rumble softly in response, like he could tell she couldn't sleep and needed some kind of reassurance he was alive.

Charlie was also getting used waking up before he did every morning, which seemed a little strange until you considered Bee was still recuperating from life threatening injuries over _six months_ after the fact. Today she wiped her eyes and looked blearily around to see Jazz and Dino were up and out, but Ironhide was still there under the awning, firmly in park.

Charlie yawned and pulled her shoes on. She expected her floundering around in the back to wake Bee up but he kept blissfully out. That was sort of cute. As gently as she could, she unlatched the door and stepped out, stretched, and cracked her back.

It was impossible to tell whether Ironhide was awake or not; with her engine off, she was as silent and still as any other car. But Charlie had a feeling the big lady wasn't catching some extra Zs this morning, so much as she was being very, very careful not to wake up the ambulance who's tush could still be seen high up in the air behind her.

Charlie passed her and crossed her arms to enjoy the scene: On one hand, it was a completely mundane looking truck towing a completely mundane looking ambulance; on the other hand, it was basically someone letting their wiped out friend slumber away peacefully on their shoulder. 

"How long do you guys normally sleep?" Charlie whispered to Ironhide.

Our planet has a completely ndifferent solar period from yours," the truck answered. "But most of us are Daytimers. Need light to see by. Jazz's th' only nocturnal; but he's used to runnin' with us, so he takes recharge when the rest of us do."

Huh! It felt ultra convenient to develop glowing eyes and chest lamps if you couldn't otherwise see at night. "So," she reasoned, "was everything close enough that you just adjusted to our sun?"

"Ayup." She considered the question. "We're pretty adaptive. Fifty hours daylight's about our max. Places longer than that get broken into fractions..."

Them 'bots must have been to plenty of other planets, for war or for other reasons. Charlie squatted down to get a look up into Ratchet's missing wheel well, to start getting an idea for what kind of work this future patch job was going to entail. _Robots always look crazily similar to normal cars._ Even as an expert, Charlie had once taken several passes under her own Volkswagon Beetle to recognize something was terribly off.

This situation was a little different. A fairly massive chunk of Ratchet's side was missing, blackened, and streaked in purple. At just the right angle, Charlie could make out a soft blue glow deep inside that sure gave him away as alien. It wasn't all bad news, though. The rest of his undercarriage looked deceptively normal. Taking it in, Charlie was pretty confident she could disguise the injuries. It might just take more than one layer of patch, was all.

The biggest task would be to match a donor wheel well to him. At a glance, she was pretty sure this model of ambulance had been built on a truck body. That didn't make him terribly different from Ironhide. Maybe more an F250? It was doable. 

_What is that?_ Shiny new metal was peeking out here and there through the soot, looking just like bubbles of fresh weld. Charlie quickly assumed this was healing tissue, like the healthy pink you might spot at the bottom of a cut. That was neat looking! A car, healing itself. _Regenerating_.

She forgot herself for a second, and reached out to touch at one of them, and found the whole healing area was warm to the touch. Crazy! _Uh_! She snatched her hand guiltily back. If someone had walked into her hospital room and jammed their fingers in her healing lacerations, she wouldn't have been happy with them. 

Ratchet was okay though. Didn't even budge.

Curious now, Charlie fetched her otherwise unused mechanic's creeper, carried it over, and scooted it and her butt up under the broken axle. _Oof. Yow, that's crazy to look at. _Whole third of it was gone, blown away, the metal folded back in strips and brittle-looking. _What did they hit him with? A missile? _

She ought to have checked on the damage earlier, because this suspension system was a mess. _Hold on,_ she needed gloves for this. Charlie could maybe fake the installation with a nice solid spacer bar and just grind it off again later. That'd be good enough for the wheel to appear normal from the outside. _But wouldn't that hurt? _Where was the spring coil?

If Bee could feel his own seat cushions, then Ratchet was sure as hell going to feel every pothole in the road vibrating straight through his partially blown off leg. _Ow. That sounds painful. _Okay, she was going to have to fix these shocks.

"I beg your pardon, human," growled a groggy, unfriendly medic. "But what do you think you are doing?"

_Woops_. Well at least now she knew what she had to fix. Charlie removed her arms from his missile wound and kicked the ground to slide out from under him.

"Checking out your rear end," she answered.

There was an unexpected silence, then, as if Ratchet had made a big inhale through all his grills to lecture her, only to trip over the first word and leak air like a balloon. 

Charlie blinked.

Ironhide busted out roaring with laughter like that was the funniest damn thing she'd heard in awhile. 

Bee came awake with a very uncarlike jump, powered on, and then idled over buzzing in concern. Charlie was equally confused.

"O-oh nothin'" Ironhide hooted and cackled, "Kid just said she liked his aft!"

Charlie felt heat on her face, but then she snickered. After the incident with Bee and her makeshift shower, it hadn't occurred to her robots might have cheesy come-on lines and flirts that sounded anything like human ones.  
  
But, hey! Ratchet had referred to having 'parents' hadn't he? Plural? That seemed to suggest they paired off to have kids, even if they reproduced by catching balls of light that dropped from orbit and not, you know, _with sex._ So why not find each other attractive? Or even some equivalent of 'sexy!' You didn't have to _reproduce _to want to look at or touch each other. These 'bots could feel pain, they liked to play, and they found it plesant to be groomed; there was no reason to assume right off the bat that they and their culture were all necessarily 'chaste.' She'd have to actually ask.

_Which I can probably get away with doing, seeing as my only friend other than Bee is the guy who can cover up his embarrassment by spinning it into a medical lecture. But h__ey, you know what? All these robots, even the Decepticons, seem to specifically choose English translations for words that are coy or outright puns_. _So! Clearly their native language has plenty of room for double entendres, pick-up-lines, and clever turns-of-phrase. They wouldn't be translating stuff like this otherwise._

"Ha - ha - ha," Ratchet droned, "very funny."

"It's a very nice aft," Charlie was sure to confirm with a mollifying pat that had an ambulance huffing and puffing with indignation. Then she swatted Ironhide's cargo bed with palm on the way back to Bee and added, "So's yours."

"Hey!" Ironhide barked, but then kept chuckling to herself like she'd liked that joke too.

"Morning Bee," Charlie yawned and wiped her face. "Let me just get my blankets." 

He beeped at her and started playing, "♫I'm walking on sunshine, whoaaa!♫"

She heard motors and gears working behind her, and stood up with her wadded blankets to see Ironhide getting up (as tall as she could stand with the low roof). Ratchet, for whatever reason, emerged from vehicle form in a bit of an upside down puddle. That made his fluster ten times as cute. Ironhide got him under the arms and pulled him upright. He brushed dirt off himself, and shot everyone prohibitory a glare. Wrenches would be thrown, that glare warned!

Nope. Too late. Officially cute. No amount of thrown mechanics' tools could change it. 

Yawning, Charlie went off to put those blankets away and figure out what breakfast was going to be.

* * *

When Charlie saw the Autobots start drawing in the dirt, and especially when Bumblebee took over most of the drawing while the others rubbed their chins and speculated, it occurred to her that she might be able to help them out. She popped her glove compartment, got out the very Atlas of America that had gotten her here.

"Bee!" she called, hurrying up beside them and folding open the Atlas to the proper state. He pivoted on his heel and twittered. She showed him the atlas. "It's a book of maps," she explained. "Of our highway system."

Bee perked up, taking the booklet gently from her and rapidly searching the page. It was quite small in his hands, more of a note card than a big old atlas, and she wondered if he'd be able to interpret the format of human maps.

"These are state maps, and they only shows the major roads and highways," she explained, leaning over his arm to point. "See? We're somewhere around here, and this is the nearby highway. The type of road is indicated by color and whether it's a dashed line or solid."

Bee's antenna perked up, and he leaned closer, studying the lines in a way that went beyond comparing its lines to his dirt diagram. Charlie wondered if he was memorizing it. He apparently could save and replay music without cassettes or records, and even holograms of people and buildings. She didn't put it past him he could memorize a map.

"Is that some kind of _book_?" Jazz asked as he hunkered down, apparently wowed. "It's so small."

Bee, to his credit, was doing very well turning pages without damaging it. 

"It's made of paper. Didn't you guys work with the military at one point?" Charlie recalled.

"Mission debriefings were objectives-focused," Dino interjected. "Not for sight-seeing."

"N' we got good memories for roads," Ironhide put in. 

"All cars should have a road atlas," Charlie disputed, leaning into Bee and ignoring whatever Dino was growling under his breath. "Do you need any higher level of detail? There's some city maps in the back but they're only for the most populated cities. If we're going somewhere in specific, I can get a state or local atlas."

Bee bobbed his head, taking in the newly available info while rapidly flicking through the pages. 

"What state do you want? North or south of where we are now?" she asked. Bee held his arm out to point a direction. Charlie had to turn herself around, look for the sun, try to guess what the middle of the sky would have been—

"South!" Jazz realized he could help. Apparently they were both wayfinders or else maybe all robots just had internal compasses.

"Okay," she reached over Bee's arms and flipped pages; she knew what states occurred in what order.

"We're in South Carolina," she said, underscoring the word with her finger. "South of us is Georgia."

Bee mumbled tones that sounded roughly like the vowels in Georgia. 

"Can he read?" she asked Ironhide.

"Your language? Little bit," the big bot answered. "Ratchet's proficient."

"You need to be able to read," Charlie nudged Bee. "Everything on our roads is labeled."

He started playing the Alphabet song, which she sincerely doubted was presently on the radio. Apparently someone was picking it up as he went.

"How did you even land here knowing English to begin with?" she did wonder.  
  
"Had data slugs to chew through on the way here for that," Ironhide muttered. "Not the first time Cybertronians been on your planet. We all got different sizes of," she paused, "'dictionary,' to reference for the right words. N' Ratchet's got the best processors for words, of us five."

_Possibly because Ratchet's a doctor and knows plenty of medical jargon to begin with? _Charlie found herself nodding. She also made up her mind that she'd ask for some stories that evening. 

For now, Bee leaned back over his dirt map, and corrected a few lines, and added a few more. For reasons she didn't entirely understand, Bee started playing _San Francisco. _She wondered why maps, reading, or road signs had him thinking about California, but she was somewhat touched to realize his radio was off and this was actually a recording.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gee, Charlie, I wonder why your carfriend memorized a sad-sounding song about the general area in which you lived with a chorus about love in summertime. I wonder. Why could that - possibly - be.


	29. Lot Lizard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work needs to be changed to 'Car Talk feat. Ratchet'

When Charlie finally got back to Ratchet, he was grumpier than usual. No surprise there; he'd just rolled out of bed to the laughter of old friends and children, and that was positively inexcusable. Mirth was to be frowned out wherever it dared take root. How dare anyone giggle, chuckle, or chortle! How dare they!?

But in all seriousness: He seemed to be waiting on her professional assessment of the patch job they'd be performing, so—now that she was getting comfortable in their budding 'friendship'—Charlie couldn't help but _withhold_ it from him. 

"Well?" the medic finally growled, irritable she was making him ask.

"Well what?" Charlie feigned ignorance while passing him tools.

He leveled an unimpressed look her way, hiked up a ratchet with extension bar to get a better grip on it, and then went back to work on the small replacement part they were adapting for his fuel synth. "I'm not going to ask twice."

"But Doctor Ratchet," Charlie played, "I'm only a lowly substitute for a toy plastic truck you give your patients to keep them entertained, and you're a world-renown master of all things robotic. What could an insignificant little human like myself hope to add to all your magnificent healing wisdom?"

Blue eyes rolled her way as if bored. Seemed Ratchet was done being flustered for the day, thank you very much, and—no—Charlie would not be milking any more of that reaction out of him. 

"I actually had a question, first," she switched gears. "Do robots have personal space bubbles?" 

"What?" Ratchet derailed from his work, and straightened up to better consider her question. "With regards to this morning?"

"Bee came up and started touching me while I was completely naked and trying to shower off mud."

"Ah." He said it like it was very clear to him how that had been a problem, but then he only went back to the task at hand.

"Well how am I supposed to interpret that?" Charlie was getting mixed messages. "He was clueless, but now a truck just busted out laughing at pickup lines."

Ratchet didn't immediately answer. 

"That was a pun," she added. Pickup lines.

"I know. It was subtle enough not to be entirely stupid." He took a big inhale through all his vents. "To answer your question, Cybertronians do not have clothes, and therefore little frame of reference by which to understand your peoples' nudity taboo. As a result, the clothing concept fascinates the younglings. They cannot change their own appearance day-to-day the way in which you can. And, to them, it seems you've made the entire process of doing so _mysterious_."

"Oh. _Oh,_ okay." That gave her perspective.

"Mecha like myself can at least appreciate the vulnerability of youth, before one has attained one's final upgrades and final armor. But that is more about feeling unprotected. There is nothing lewd about it."

"Bumblebee was born full sized anyway," Charlie recalled. 

"And has rarely been around 'normal' sparklings for frame of reference. The only times he's been without a panel or part have been owed to injury, or mid-surgery. Perhaps he does associate it with vulnerability. Perhaps not."

"I see. But you _do_ find each other attractive, the same basic way as humans do?"

"Yes."

That was a strong 'yes!' No qualifier words, mouth sounds, or 'so-so' gesticulations were tacked on to soften it. Robots could form relationships, raise kids, and find each other hot. "Is anywhere private...?" she pressed. "Like how, with humans, you can't touch another person's hip... butt... pelvis area?"

"We have rough equivalents to what you organics would term 'erogenous zones,' but they are not normally exposed or even activated. So you do not need to worry about casually bumping into any of them."

"Even with you sort of flayed open?"

Ratchet paused working again and lifted his head. "Oh I see." He inhaled thoughtfully. "The reason for this line of questioning finally makes an iota of sense. You were wondering if you were touching me inappropriately? That is not what happened today. Today was the normal discomfort of having someone messing around inside one of your half-melted 'bones.'"

Oh good, Charlie was relieved. You didn't want to cause a misunderstanding of that level with your new alien friends while only trying to help them.

"I can also add," he _did_ add, "that it is unnerving to be pawed at and crawled around while in recharge. Similar to—mn—waking up with a wild rat on your berth."

"Can you give me a general sense of where private spots are, at least?" She gestured around her body. "So I know for the future?"

"On the interior wall of the forearm and clustered around the spark."

"Around the spark... that would be the upper torso? Not the pelvis." It dawned on her why shielding her boobs from Bee had helped establish what 'private area' meant. 

"And as you have seen," Ratchet continued, "we have no taboos against touching one another's chests or arms. It _is_ considered _somewhat_ awkward to let a servo linger uninvited in areas under the arms, like so," Ratchet gestured to himself at around where ribs would be on a human.

Oh? That area was familiar, but for another reason, and Charlie winced: No wonder Bumblebee hadn't wanted that rusted abscess on his side touched! It was probably right on top of some of the most _sensitive nerves_ in his body. Like a big red pimple in the absolute _worst_ possible spot. Maybe that was part of why Ratchet had also backed off; he could appreciate just how painful it had to be. 

"So, is 'nice aft' as racy as it is to humans?"

Ratchet squinted at her. 

Charlie beamed; he'd caught her. Racy. She was picking up how this worked, and the fact that he kept glaring at her was proof of it. 

"'Nice aft' translates accurately enough into English," Ratchet confirmed. "It is only that our language also has, 'Nice fore.'"

"Is that any more polite?"

"Not really."

"Oh. Well in that case: Nice fore."

Rachet made a rumble in his chest. A laugh? A growl? "Primus forgive me, I am creating a monster," he muttered to himself, and then reached over for her and plucked her unceremoniously off the ground to inspect her at his eye-level. "The patch, earthling. Before I de-helm you with a wrench."

Given how close she'd come to having her head taken off at least once before, Charlie chose not to call that bluff! Time to stop teasing. "I saw a complication—something else we have to decide how to fix," she leaned forward to think. "It's your shocks and suspension system. The flatbed wheels are going to give you a bit of cushion from the road, but that high up off the ground and all the vibrations are going to be amplified. If I just weld a temporary straight shaft of metal in where your shocks are supposed to be, well... it sounds like the trip might be painful."

"Hmm. What, if we were discussing a normal car, would the solution be on this planet?"

"I worked a scrap yard, so seeing that much damage to the body would usually just lead me to disassemble the vehicle because there's plenty of better-off trucks in need of parts. 

"But you, obviously there's only one you, so that's not going to work. I could try and make the shocks installation just as temporary as the rest of the patch, or find something soft jam in there between you and the new axle, but I'm not sure I trust those ideas to work... Your shocks are a load-bearing part. What if it breaks and you go down on that wheel, and then to boot there's not enough tension on the flatbed belts, so you're bouncing all over the place on an open freeway?"

His facial expressions led her to believe he wasn't used to being shipped anywhere. Charlie's layman know-how was coming in handy!

"If we go ahead and actually fix the suspension system for real, you'll be—loosely speaking—'roadworthy' in an emergency. That sounds like a plus, maybe even worth the trade-off of slowing down your systemic healing? Ultimately it's up to you, doctor. I'm just a mechanic."

His brows were furrowed and he was thinking deeply. Ratchet had far greater skills and technical knowledge than she had, but he was surrounded by sticks and flint and no other doctors, Charlie was the resident Cavewoman, and clearly that made her useful for brainstorming. Computerstorming? She was going to have to build up a sixth sense for how these pun-words worked.

He asked: "Is it possible to conduct a more nuanced, partial installation of the missing pieces of the suspension system?"

"Maybe," Charlie decided was the best answer. "Okay, so... here's the thing, here's where my experience is limited: If I was stuck fixing you alone, I'd have to replace everything. Stress fractures and warped metal don't heal in a normal car, and everything in a car is under tension while in motion, so it’s inappropriate and dangerous for a mechanic to leave any damage parts inside the car at all.

"I've had to explain to numerous customers that even if I _could_ rebuild just one part of something, the labor would be worth more than the cost of the parts, and the result would be less safe because there could be damage invisible to the naked eye.

"But obviously you're a very different customer. So. Let me think... I could try and replace only the broken bits. Trouble is: Everything down there is a little warped on one end or another. I could possibly hammer some of the warpage out, but parts won't make a tight, neat, safe, fit. I could possibly cut off damaged regions, cut matching replacement parts, and weld the two together, but getting everything straight would be a challenge.

"It'd all be new for me, and it'd definitely be a little hit and miss, and I'd be nervous. I'd need some guidance from you, and I'm not sure how well you can repair your own 'car mode' while half-transformed."

"It'd be a struggle," he admitted at a growl, visibly deliberating his options. She waited. She liked Ratchet's face when he was busy thinking; his usually unamused expression transcended into crinkled squints, side-eyes, and expressive twitches and tugs at the corners of the mouth. After a bit he glanced her up and down and gave a 'not bad' grimace of approval.

Charlie felt thoroughly rewarded.

"Aside from the damaged shock," he then asked, "what is your opinion on the rest of the patch job?"

Charlie waved a hand. "Easy as pie. You look like your ambulance outfit was built on a sturdy old F250 frame, and those are common trucks. Assuming you don't have something more important for me to do, today I'll find some a donor truck somewhere here in the scrap yard. I'll look for axels, shocks, and wheels while I'm at it. Possibly some sheet metal if I need to add a few large flat patches.

"I'll need you to transform, briefly, and I'll use old canvas or burlap and trace the missing area of your flank like I'm making a pattern for clothing. I'll take it over to the donor and cut out perfect matches with the welding torch. We make sure they line up perfectly and I didn't make any mistakes, and then I spot-weld them onto you.

"The last step will be to make the crack between it and your body as difficult to notice as possible. What I'm really hoping to find is something sneaky to put over it, like aluminum foil or duct tape or putty, which I'll spray down with car paint. If not I'll just have to cake the paint really thick over the gap. It just has to last a single trip."

Blue eyes stared out thoughtfully into the void and then narrowed on her again. "You seem to know a great deal about hiding damage on a car."

Charlie laughed at the suspicion. "I do! Bought a lot of damaged cars for my uncle. I've seen scammers do ev-ery-thing under the sun to try and hide the fact their old jalopy isn't worth much more than the cost of towing it. Bungie cords, duct tape, fake skid plates, super glue, perfume..."

"_Perfume?_ What restorative function could that possibly imitate?"

"Bad transmissions have a smell. Shitty exhaust? Smell. Leaking oil on hot metal? Smell. Too many lot lizards in the back of the cab? Definitely a smell." Charlie made a face. "Trying to pass it off as the lady friend dousing herself in an inch of musk every time she got in and out is a memorable classic."

"What in Primus' name is a lot lizard?"

"A hooker who works trucking stations."

"A..." The word 'hooker' was apparently in Ratchet's on-board dictionary because he recoiled with a wide grimace of disgust plastered all over his normally unemotive face. 

Charlie busted out laughing. Just when she'd been sure Ratchet couldn't be gotten the best of twice in one day!

Okay! Okay, Charlie's poor robots really were pretty puritan. It wasn't her imagination back with Bee. Just because they flirted with each other and hollered pickup lines didn't mean they were throwing their sensitive chassis ports into the hands of whomever they could fine. (Or, at least, Ratchet wasn't!)

"Are humans genuinely that preoccupied with recreational reproductive activities!?" the old grump demanded, sounding as if everything he knew or grudgingly respected about human cultural norms was on the line, and he was an inch away from giving up on them forever!

"No," Charlie flapped a hand. "Although I'm sure they'd justify it to themselves by saying yes. Some groups of humans are more obsessed than others, 'cause of, I guess, history. Like my own job. Mechanics' is a man's profession, through and through."

This story wasn't really important, but the way that giant, disgusted, irritable expression suddenly softened at her made her want to keep talking, so she did:

"I almost couldn't find anybody who'd apprentice me. Either they thought I'd distract the other men in their shop, or they looked me up and down like I was a dessert item. And if that sounds weird to you, it sounded just as weird to me. Growing up, the mechanics who worked for my dad were all really civil guys. I had no idea that wasn't the same everywhere."

Ratchet looked actually quite surprised or taken in by her story, or maybe even like this was reminding him of something from his home world. "We," he said after a moment, his voice gentle, "have experienced our share of casteism in the past. More even than you humans have..."

"Casteism?"

"Classification based on function. I believe some of your earth cultures still have castes. If the term is unfamiliar, substitute it with 'racism, sexism,' similar concepts."

"Well... you've been around longer," she replied with reference back to that 'more than you humans have' bit.

"A lot longer..." he murmured to himself. "This is why you perked up at Ironhide's gender?"

Charlie grinned. "Yeah. She's cool. I like that she's the big tough one."

"Hmm." Ratchet tended to end deep conversations prematurely with thoughtful grunts, Charlie had noticed, and she wasn't mistaken this time, because that was exactly what he was doing now: He turned and set her gently back down again. "Get to work on finding that 'donor truck' you seek. Ironhide will help you move it. Assume we will be replacing the rear suspension system."

Charlie mock saluted, and turned to trot away. "But seriously, nice fore!" she called over her shoulder and, yes, success, he gave a long-suffering sigh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just setting up for Charlie to have to ride somewhere with OP in the future and, after getting out, declaring to Ratchet her inspection was complete and there were definitely never any lot lizards in this cab, it's immaculate in here, clean as a whistle!
> 
> Ratchet turns purple and tries not to cry/die laughing about this assessment of his leader's chastity while Optimus sputters he dearly *hopes* no poor tiny organic lizards are stuck inside him!


	30. Pyrrhic Victory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to warn ahead of time I've shrunk the time frames of the Cybertronian war to be _ slightly less ridiculous _. When I think of the things The Lost Light can get up to in a year, I don't see how it's possible a Cybertronian war could last four million years. Four thousand? Fourteen thousand? Ehhh, no, but I'll take it!
> 
> If you've ever wanted to track the history of a term over time, check out Google Books' Ngram Viewer. For instance, I checked out "comm link" for this chapter to make sure Charlie would understand it, seeing as this story opens up before the birth of the world wide web (1991), and before cell phones and texting became commonplace (mid/late nineties). But looks like thanks to Star Trek and fantasy, we're in the clear!

It had been a long day of hard work, not just for Charlie but for everyone.

While she'd been submerging car parts in a poor man's anti-corrosion bath, climbing the scrap heap, making patterns, and contending with the heat of the welder to sheer off patch materials, the Autobots were stocking up on on everything they'd need for the upcoming trip south. Ironhide helped her move a truck. Dino stayed behind to guard the yard; though Ratchet eventually sicked him on sanding rust off the axle Charlie'd picked out, and he was sullen and quiet the entire time. Then the rest of the crew showed up with a flat bed trailer, which—based on it's quality—they'd most probably stolen off a nearby farm.

In the evening, as night fell and severely limited scouting and survey activities, the Autobots came back together at the center of the scrap yard to polish weapons and quietly chit-chat.

Jazz started up another kiln, but fed this one exclusively on old palette wood. He waved Charlie near and offered to heat up her dinner. She decided tot take a chance, but tried to keep him from burning anything by instructing him not to bring it much above 'boiling.'

He quickly did mental arithmetic. "One hundred degrees?"

"What?" Charlie floundered. "Oh! We do Fahrenheit in America. Yeah! I _think_ that's one hundred Celsius."

"You got it, little mama!"

Charlie appreciated the fire. More than that, she appreciated how an otherwise mildly-careless Jazz had gone out of his way to collect safe burning materials just so she could join the rest of them. Well. Almost all of them. For a sec, Charlie felt bad one member of the group couldn't quite be there. Then she turned to see Ironhide stepping carefully out of the awning with Ratchet's arm across her shoulders, helping him stagger out and up towards the fire. 

"Careful Ratch!" Jazz cooed. "Don't twist anything!"

Ratchet muttered things about young idiots and nicknames under his breath. His missing shin was painfully obvious, but as he hobbled along with his weight on Ironhide, Charlie realized the two of them were roughly the same height. Wait: Of course they were,_ that made sense._ He and she took alternate forms of comparative sizes: Ambulances were built in the frame of big trucks. Ironhide was much _chunkier,_ but Ratchet was pretty thick himself. Nothing like waspish Dino over there. 

"Glad you could join us," Dino unexpectedly welcomed their medic. Jazz, Bee, and Charlie chimed in on the same sentiment.

"How tall are you?" Charlie asked as Ironhide eased Ratchet down beside her.

"Roughly six of your earth meters," he huffed out as he took his seat.

"Can... can you convert that to-"

"Twenty feet."

Charlie compared that back to things of a similar size. The average story of a house was about ten feet in height, so, standing at twice that, Ratchet could have taken off the roof of any ranch, popped his hands on his hips, bent over at the waist, and leered down at everyone inside. Like little toys.

Charlie had of course known Ratchet was much bigger than Bee, but that mental image still put things in perspective. She was a doll in the medic's grasp. When he wasn't grabbing her off her feet, Charlie could sit comfortably in the cup of his palm. That one time Jazz had shoved her onto his shoulder, she'd measured, crotch to crown, roughly the same height as Ratchet's head. 

For contrast, Charlie came all the way up to Bumblebee's hip—or at least his thigh, if she was being completely honest about her height—and when Bee wanted to pick her up, he typically used both hands. In fact, Bee was sitting cross-legged beside her now, and Charlie only felt kid-sized at his knee, not doll-sized. If she stood up, his face would easily be in reach. 

There was a lot of variety here between different 'models' of robot, Charlie concluded. Much bigger than the gap between different races of humans, that was for sure.

As if reading her thoughts, Bee reached around her and scooped his fingers under her, tucked her briefly against the wall of his arm and then boosted her up onto his lap. Charlie grinned and situated herself. No complaint on her end!

"Don't drip anything you're eating on me, or I'll have to find out if Ratchet knows anything about fixing organics."

"Meep! Bzz bzzu?"

"Yes, you can eat in front of me and I won't freak out. I apologized, didn't I?"

Jazz looked over his shoulder in surprise, asking, "Whoa, do you suddenly have a comm link, lil mama?"

"Huh? Oh. No, I'm just becoming fluent in _soulful buzzing._"

Jazz's expression twisted between excitement and confusion, like he was honestly uncertain whether 'buzz' was a language or not and needed someone to please save him from his ignorance. Bee played laugh tracks. Ironhide rolled her eyes. "Jazz," Ratchet groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. Migraines: Even robots got them. 

"I knew she was joking! I did!"

Charlie leaned comfortably back into her yellow bot as everyone bantered. He still smelled faintly of leather polish. She glanced up to see him grinning at her, and he winked. It felt like he wanted to tell her a story, maybe about Jazz's background, but he settled for brushing his thumb against her shoulder and squeezing her gently. Charlie patted his cheek. _It's okay, big guy. (Or 'little guy,' technically?) You aren't scary. I'm sorry I screamed._ Bee crooned; he understood; he'd forgiven her.

Jazz eventually passed Charlie her heated soup, and she had the foresight to pull out her mechanics' gloves first before taking it. Which was smart, because Jazz had just blithely offered her a boiling temperature container with no concept of the fact that humans burned. Charlie stuck her spoon in, stirred, and blew away steam. Bee ate a much hotter meal by turning his face away so no crumbs could fall on her.

She glanced up once or twice. Now that she'd seen it a few times, Bee's bug mandibles and—what did you call the center tube, a.... a proboscis? was that the word?—seemed suited to the rest of his features. He was a little alien. That wasn't a bad thing. It was sort of neat watching him bite and lick past actual flames that wafted off his meal. The food deflated and shrunk in size until eventually he popped the crumpled and wadded remains of it into his mouth and his teeth shut closed around it. His jaw worked as he either chewed or maybe repositioned the food with his tongue, one of the two.

Charlie belatedly remembered her own soup and went back to blowing on it. "Got a question," she asked into the warmth of their camp fire. "Why do you all use English to talk to each other?"

"Ease of use!" Jazz took the question. "'Specially with the locals!"

"Our home planet's atmosphere is very different from yours," Ratchet elaborated. "When using foreign gasses as the medium for transmission, all Cybertronian languages sound highly distorted, and can be difficult to understand. While some of us can modulate our vocal synthesizers to compensate, it tends to be much, much easier to use the host languages born on whatever planet we are visiting. So much so that the practice was standardized, and any clarifications or specialized orders which can only be explained in Cybertronian are added on using an encrypted transmission."

Charlie blinked rapidly. "Wait, so is that like.... how _humans_ sound different if we inhale helium?"

Ratchet frowned at her. "Why would you inhale helium? You cannot conduct respiration without oxygen. Is helium some kind of drug to your species?"

"No, it's used for blowing up brightly colored balloons for kids to play with. On one unrecorded but important day in human history, somewhere in the world, our equivalent of Jazz or Bee decided to find out what would happen if they inhaled the stuff in the balloon. And then proudly demonstrated the high pitched and tinny voice it gave them, and left everyone else laughing to death."

Bee squeaked. Jazz pouted. Then both of them began snickering, and Ratchet, amused, muttered a, "Yes, _most definitely_ it is comparable to trying to talk through a breath of helium."

When the laughter had settled, Charlie admitted, "I didn't keep up with news about the war. Tuned it out. I know less than I should."

"How convenient for you," Dino retorted 

She ignored him, even though the words bit pretty hard, because of course none of the Autobots had ever been able to tune out the war, ever. "Why'd any of you end up on Earth at all?" she asked.

"Oh," Ironhide breathed deeply, the air rumbling out through all her vents. Whatever sci-fi production had left Charlie with the impression robots oughtn't need to breathe had apparently overlooked that mechanical things tended to make heat, and heat had to get dispersed somehow. Even excellent fluid coolant systems eventually needed an outtake somewhere. "It's a long story, kid."

"Ratchet also said something about there being 'no more generations' after Bumblebee. And then told me to ask you what that meant."

Ironhide shot a glance Ratchet's way but didn’t seem to begrudge him anything. "Well," she finally said, "the two things are kinda connected."

Charlie waited, hoping her face was proof enough that she was really listening.

"First time prospectors came to your world, they reported life but no significant intelligent activity. Planet was classified as protected for the sake of the indigenous organic lifeforms," Ironhide explained, and wow did that give Charlie a frame of reference for how much time they were about to discuss.

"But a couple thousand years of war change a bot's priorities," Ironhide described. "At peace time, you've got the luxury of protecting things like natural resources. In war, times get desperate. If you're sitting on a resource you don't tap, it starts becoming clear the people you're responsible for getting back home safe and sound are now dying because you're dragging your pedes. Plus, your enemies might get to tapping it before you do.

"So we took another look at earth. Imagine our surprise when a new prospecting crew relayed back that this... industrious, minicon-sized little life form had sprung up overnight and colonized almost the whole globe. No one could believe intelligent life could evolve that fast. Was initially dismissed by everyone as a hoax. S'maybe why some mecha still play your whole species off as maybe 'not real intelligent life.'"   
  
Charlie grappled with the amount of time being discussed. How old was China? Egypt? "'P-prospectors?'" she asked. "Like, what, like people who drill for oil or are looking for gold? You came here looking for resources?"  
  
Ironhide bobbed her head.  
  
"What kind?"  
  
"Changed over time," Ironhide muttered. "At first your planet was just earmarked as a renewable fuel source."

What, like biodiesel? Charlie suddenly wasn't sure. Were they talking about such long time frames that even the oil formed over tens of thousands of years beneath earth's crust was still considered 'renewable'?

"But later, when Cybertron started dying... Well, then you had something we needed a lot more than your organic oils."

"It was your planet's magnetic field," Ratchet explained. "You may know it as the force that protects your planet from its sun, and prevents the leach of gasses off into the void. It's caused by your dense metal core, miles and miles under your rocky veneer. That was the thing we needed—that magnetic field, it's exact properties, your relationship to your sun, your specific Polar Auroras, your core.

"With your planet stripped bare, we could activate an extension terminal connected to Vector Sigma to restart the creation of sparks. Earth would be colonized as New-Cybertron, and our species would be saved."

Charlie stiffened, looking from face to face. Dino busted out laughing cruelly at her. Bee growled and his arm shifted to encompass where she was sitting. 

"Our planet... random little old us—Earth," Charlie floundered, "was the only planet you could do this to?"

"Nope," Ironhide answered. "And that's where the Decepticons come in. Them and everyone else who thought appeasing tyrants and world-killers was an acceptable sacrifice for fixing a mess they had put us in. It's like appeasing the arsonist roommate that started the house on fire by letting him kill the neighbors and move in to their place. What I'm saying is:

"You organics are exactly why the Decepticons picked to bring the terminal of Vector Sigma to your world. And they did it a long time ago, and hid it, and we only found out where the slaggin' pits the damned thing was a few short solar cycles ago.

"See the Autobot code is against harming natives. So when the Decepticons put all their last eggs in this basket, set up here, made their stand here, they knew we couldn't ever possibly capture the terminal and use it ourselves to replenish our numbers, because we'd be too 'soft' to eradicate you humans. They also knew we'd be honor bound to protect you, so they could run around killing innocents as distractions and we'd be at a crisis over where to focus our efforts.

"They set up a lose-lose situation for us Autobots.

"If we let the Decepticons go through with the procedure, we'd most likely immediately lose the war, soon as new sparks were out the gate. We'd be overwhelmed, enslaved and imprisoned, with scores of us sentenced to death. Yet our species would be saved. On the other hand, if we fought the Decepticons, if we protected the humans, we'd stretch our resources to the breaking point with absolutely nothing to gain, and we'd most probably doom our people.

"The Decepticons used you as hostages, hostages they planned to kill from the beginning, 'cause they felt like they had something else _we_ deep down really wanted, the salvation of our kind, and that we'd submit and let them 'give' it to us. They bet on our morale being too low to fight them. On our convictions being too weak. The banked that the Autobot philosophy couldn't withstand the burden of the _blame_. They bet we wouldn't kill off our last hope. They bet we'd do nothing.

"But they forgot we've been doing this dance with them a long time. That we've tried to save Cybertron before, and that we've had 'last hopes' before this, opportunities they purposefully ruined because they would rather see the universe burn before being willing to accept they ain't allowed to rule it.

"Optimus got us here before the main Decepticon invasion force. We screwed up their communications signals, we fought them, we got betrayed by supposed brothers left, right, and center—apologists—but ultimately we got our hands on the terminal—the last long distance remote line to the Divine AllSpark in existence—and we destroyed it, dooming Vector Sigma ta silence and death on Cybetron.

"Our war was never supposed to come to a head here, but it'd be a lie to say we didn't see the.... 'writing on the wall...' well over a hundred years ago. It had to end somewhere. Someone's planet. No one could last much longer. We—both factions, all our allies, and everyone caught in between—we'd burned through... everything. We've been fighting for tens of thousands of your planet's solar cycles, your years. There was _nothing_ left to give. 

"Every last sacrifice, every bad decision, every round of overkill, every mega bomb and death laser and plague, every last depleted resource, risky gamble, and unthinkable act of desperation—they were all behind us. By the time we landed here there was no winning. Either we defeated the Decepticons and the war ended, or else they destroyed your planet for fresh provisions... and then either we'd surrender there on the spot or else we'd capture half the new sparks, harvest half the new energon, and kick off—what—another ten thousand years of war?

"That didn't happen. We finished the job. A war older than your species_ died_ here, in three short solar cycles, with Megatron and Sentinel and all the rest of em. And that's where we're at now.

"The gray, ugly peace of the postbellum. The sunset age, Optimus called it, the twilight of a people. We're all there is now, and there ain't ever gonna be anymore. Nothing but lost 'sheep' coming home to roost from across space, colonists who've been in hiding, the last dregs of allied factions, the like. No more sparklings. No more assembly lines.

"Barring some ugly secret smuggled away in the back of the galaxy somewhere, there will never be a new generation of Cybertronians."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, we've finally reached the core underpinning our story.


	31. Response

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter is short. I debated over it. Then I realized it really does want to be this short.

Charlie lay awake and unable to sleep, staring at the Mustang roof. Her gaze wandered the seams of the upholstery, 'round the dark overhead light, and back again; around and around and around in a circle.

She wasn't any kind of military strategist, but history textbook photographs of a leveled Hiroshima swam vague and gray through her mind. 'Mutually assured destruction' was supposed to be a bargaining tool, whereby neither side could resort to violence as a means of solving problems, because to annihilate the opposition meant the complete annihilation of oneself.

It wasn't supposed to be a game of _chicken_. But, Charlie now realized, that required both sides to fear annihilation in the same way.

What happened when irrational people were behind the buttons? Crazy people, or even simply _petulant _people, or people who had nothing left but vengeance? What happened when the first nuke launched, and then the next and the next and the next, until every single one was in the air and the planet was a radioactively charged wasteland that would never, ever fully heal?

She didn't have to ask what Ironhide Had meant when she'd said 'Cybertron died.' Charlie got it. They'd done whatever the equivalent of Planet of the Apes was to themselves. They'd made it inhospitable to whatever their equivalent of 'intense radiation' was.

Her chest was tight as she thought about how if one species had done it, two sure could; as she thought about how _little_ it would take for humanity to not only wipe _itself _out but also take with them every single other organism it shared the world with. Maybe the roaches would survive, and the 'bots would come back in ten thousand years, and find another 'minicon-sized life form' had sprouted up, only this time they all had proboscises and screamed at the sight of normal mouths.

Were the Autobots really _that _old?

Charlie imagined what it must have been like, some long-gone and ridiculous amount of years ago, for Ratchet's parents to walk 'the plains of their ancestors' looking for a falling star to call their own.

Then Charlie imagined every present robot couple, either on Earth or out there in space somewhere, who now was never going to have a tiny Ratchet of their own.

She wondered how small newborn robots were.

On and on and on and on her imagination went: Thinking about what it would be like for humans to unleash some kind of sci-fi super virus on themselves that killed off their ability to reproduce. There'd be no more babies. No more bibs and diapers and tiny footprints preserved forever in clay. No more picture albums. She imagined how the mere sight of a baby bottle could turn into something painful. A trigger.

Charlie imagined being told over the public broadcasting system that an alien species out there had the cure, a way of bringing babies and fertility back to their species, and all humanity had to do was kill them all and take over their planet.

Tight and uncomfortable in her chest, in her throat, in her face—wringing tears from her eyes—was the fear human heroism might not have been strong enough, at that point, to say no.

'No, let us die. We did this to ourselves. We dug this grave. It was no one's fault but ours. We're not going to let anyone else suffer for our mistakes.'

She thought about what kind of people it took make that kind of sacrifice for strangers. 

Charlie sniffled really loudly into the silence, and wiped her face on her forearm. 

Humanity sure had been grateful, huh? A species that thought in terms of thousands of years had given up the ghost to protect them. They'd stood their ground against their own species—the worst members of their kind—not just out of principle but because a smaller, younger, stupider species had been in the line of fire, and had needed their help.

But what did humans care about, in the aftermath? Feeling tough and patriotic and in-control. _Merchandising rights. _

Had the soldiers even known Ratchet was an Autobot? Had they cared? Had they blamed the Autobots for collateral damage inflicted during the war, or were all robots the same to them: invaders? Or was it even worse than that: Was he just an _object_ to them, a piece of dangerous uncontrollable technology in the 'wrong hands?'

Charlie needed to try and blank out her mind. She needed to try and sleep. She was going to have to conduct the vast majority of Ratchet's patch job on her own while he was in vehicle form tomorrow, so she needed to be at the top of her game. If humans who understood and empathized with the Autobots' sacrifice were in short supply right now, then Charlie was going to make up for every tiny sliver of her own planet's ingratitude that she could. 

She was going to help repair and protect something older than homo erectus, someone that now could never be replaced. 

She thought of the little boy clutching a Transformer figurine, as fighter jets had chased a Decepticon war bird past town. 

'It's okay, mom,' the kid had said with an ageless expression of relief. 'It's only a bad guy.'

Charlie folded down the top of her blanket and reached out for the latch on Bumblebee's seat back. Instead of finding it, she had the disorienting experience of having the seat pitch under her as a transformation happened right next to her ear, and the seatback folded away into the trunk.

Her eyes darted to the half-lit console. "B-bee—!?" she sputtered, voice choked with phlegm. Shit, she hadn't noticed just how much of a mess she was.

Metal scraped. Instead of the back cushions reappearing, a fully formed hand slipped forward out of the trunk and settled into place over her body.

Charlie touched shakily at Bumblebee's fingertips and then wrapped her arms around his thumb and wrist, squeezing the 'hug' into place.

Bee's fingers twitched, the thumb petting gently over her.

Charlie squirmed onto her side so her back was against the heel of his palm and his thumb pillowed her head. His fingers shifted to accommodate her, twitching slightly as they settled in over her waist and thigh.

"Thanks Bee," she whispered.

His radio flicked on and the dial shifted for awhile. The speakers came on barely above a whisper:

_♫ From your head down to your toes,_   
_You're not much, goodness knows._   
_But, you're so precious to me,_   
_Cute as can be, baby of mine. ♫_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (...)
> 
> (The boy with no mother is singing her a lullaby)
> 
> I'll give you two links for your own nostalgic gratification, one to the original movie clip, one with better audio engineering so it's sound is better:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-8MbgMS6jo
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRtIIqtJmCU


	32. Shock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where did The Author go!?
> 
> Well, let me tell you a story. Or, wait, uh. First: Read the chapter, and then—if only you're interested!—check the comments and read my comment about what happened to The Author. Kay? Go on, get to readin'! You've earned some robots today! Dum-tee-dum-tee-dumm....

The Autobots briefed Charlie she had two days to get Ratchet prettied up and ready for transport. She took the case. And since it was a bright sunny morning in early summer, the first thing she suggested was that they get their tailpipes out from underneath that cramped awning and reap the benefits of that bright yellow daylight. 

"That's good, Bee," Charlie approved as she sorted out the axle from the patch materials, and numbered them all with chalk, "just set the welder over there for a second; I'm not sure where we're headed."

"How you wanna do this little mama?" Jazz asked as Ratchet hobbled out with one arm around him and the other across Ironhide. "Can we help?"

"I've got 'im, Jazz," Ironhide shooed. "She's just gonna need a hoist."

"There's pneumatic lifts in the barn," Charlie mused as she stood and twisted side to side, cracking her back. "They look rusted stiff in an extended position, but I just realized that would only stop a normal car from getting up onto them."

No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than Ratchet's barn-directed squint confirmed this was a bad idea: "I don't trust the roof on that structure."

"_Yeah_, I didn't even let Bee near it," Charlie confessed, striking that option firmly off her list, "I kept visualizing one bump and it all coming down around my ears."

Bee whined indignantly from where he'd been checking on their extension cables. Jazz cracked up laughing and jabbed at him a few times.

"That's our _Bumble _in a nutshell!" Jazz hooted, while Bee puffed up and jabbed him back.

"_Vvvwwuu—_Like you'd be—(zzt)—_any better!?"_

"What about perching him up on a scrap rack?" Charlie mused as some elementary schooler robots postured and bashed chests against one another in her backdrop. 

"I’mma just hold his aft up off th' ground for you," Ironhide said like the solution had actually been worked out ahead of time. Judging by Ratchet's souring face, it had been. "As long as it's okay just to get the bad wheels in the air? You don't need him flat horizontal or nothin?"

"Sure! I mean, _no_, I could technically do this with a car jack and him just a couple inches off the ground, but the more room for me to maneuver the better. You can hold him steady for like half an hour?"

Ironhide flapped a hand and might as well have purred a suave, 'dun worry about it sweetheart;' she rolled her shoulders and scuffed the ground with a foot like a catcher getting ready over home plate.

"The scrap rack plan is fine," Ratchet snootily disagreed, "they're clearly built to handle loads much heavier than I. If you'd just help me over to one—"

"Hoi! You're acting like a greenhorn fresh off the conveyor belt, Rach!" Ironhide hunkered down with a gleam in her eye. "What's the matter? Not so tough when it's you that needs the weld job for once? Eh!"

Ratchet gave a martyred roll of his eyes. If Catholic Robots were a thing, one could imagine him muttering, 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph protect these poor fools, I'm a four stroke engine cycle away from killing them all.'

Probably best if Charlie got on with things. "I'm ready. Hey, Bee?" Charlie called backwards into all that brouhaha, "Mind helping me out? I could use someone to hold things in place for me as I install them." 

Their little yellow _Rocky Balboa Junior_ back there switched modes so fast it left Jazz spinning. (Literally: Jazz attempting to throw the first punch, overshot his suddenly missing target, and went stumbling wide-eyed in a teetering circle as he tried to regain his balance.) Bee hopped up beside Charlie, trilled, and saluted. "Wu-woo-oo-wuuu!"

"This is entirely unnecessary," Ratchet groused.

"Sure is," Ironhide agreed, even as she favored Charlie with a big old conspiratorial wink. "But if big old Mama Ironhide's the one holding him up, guess which snob-ridged perfectionist won't be transformin' back and forth every half a _breem_ to micro-manage the patch job?"

Charlie covered a laugh. At least Ratchet seemed to know when Ratchet was beat, because Ironhide only had to clap her hands and holler, "C'mon!" to him after that, and he rolled forward dutifully into ambulance mode. Then the truckformer got her bulky arms squeezed around that boxy bed and fenders, and her thick fingers gripped onto the undercarriage. She lifted with her knees—just like a human—and up went the rear and down went the nose of the ambulance. Charlie wondered if Ratchet 'saw' through his headlights and, if so, whether it might be a little uncomfortable to be turned face-first into the dirt.

"Where'd ya need my hands, kiddo?" their femacho ladybot asked without so much as a grunt of effort. "Little further back?"

"Right there's great. Can you move your foot to the side for me? Great, that's perfect!" Charlie ducked in under one arm, getting a look at that wrecked shock in bright lighting. "Some of these bolts are twisted. Bee! Welder, please? The whole box, yeah, I need to calibrate it to cut."

"Hold it there just one second, human!" Ratchet interrupted. "Specify exactly what bolts you plan to-!"

"Ha!" Ironhide slapped his flank so hard that an ambulance nearly leaped clear off the ground in surprise. "What's the matter Ratchet? Embarrassed you have to get patched up by a native mechanic of all things?" the truckformer taunted. "Leave off the kid, she's got work to do! Ya know, this take me way back—"

Ratchet was all huffs and blusters and mouth sounds, and verbally barged in when he could stand it no more: "I am _trying _to make sure that the work goes down _correctly, _you _senile torquemaxer!_"

"Remember back on Junkion," the truck reminisced happily, "when our provisions got toasted by that wave of Decepticon bombers and we had to—"

"—I remember you _pitching a fit_ when I resorted to fix you with rusted bolts,_ that's what I remember!_"

"Oh come off it, you know I was just impressed you were willing to make due with sub-optimal parts—"

"—oh was _that_ why you were caterwauling about like a _wounded turbofox_ for half the solar cycle!? Hmm-mm! I see! Very informative!"

Charlie sighed it out happily, as she prepped her welder and shot Bee a glance. From the look at his face, the grandparents bantering overhead were just as nostalgically pleasurable for him as they were for her. Charlie winked, and pulled down her mask. She lit up the torch, and set to work.

* * *

"That's it!" Charlie announced, standing back to survey her work and then getting out from beneath the bickering Cybertronians. "Suspension's repaired, wheel's on; we just have to quickly test out the shocks and then if everything feels right we can move on to the—"

Ironhide gave a flick of her wrists and let go!

Ratchet cut off mid-sentence with what ought to be best described as a _squeak_ (but which Charlie would be willing to let him get away with calling a grunt, given the circumstances). Only instead of crashing painfully down on the site of a major amputation, Ratchet instead landed on two perfectly good shocks and bounced momentarily (and silently) in place. 

"Shocks'r good," Ironhide reported, and Bumblebee exploded with laugh tracks.

"Not like _that!" _Charlie swatted Ironhide across her calf, because the sudden drop had freaked her out nearly as bad as it had Ratchet. "He could have bottomed out!"

"Ratch's _way _too stiff to ever let himself bottom out," Ironhide dared to snicker, and only then was when Charlie felt things had gone a little far. Because, poor Ratchet, he'd had enough of being distracted and manhandled and <strike>insulted</strike> bantered with for the day. He sat there quivering in anger, and when Ironhide hunched over to pick him up again, he gave a loud _hiss _and lurched forward out of her grasp.

Ironhide huffed. Bumblebee's antenna flattened and he looked from person to person. Charlie shot them both a reproachful look. "Maybe apologize to him?" she finally suggested, when the two of them idled there looking guilty. 

"Yeah," Ironhide finally agreed with a self conscious smirk and a big apologetic shrug. Even when saying sorry, she was a fearsome sight. "Was my bad, Ratchet." 

Ratchet did not respond to that. Charlie crossed her arms and waited on him to be ready, figuring that was no harm in it. She was imagining a red and white robot with his brows creased together, his head lowered, his mouth a thin line, and his body language all turned inward to sulk indignantly. Charlie didn't have the _best _people skills in the world, but neither did most mechanics, and so she'd seen her fill of upset grandpas who needed a sixty second detox with nobody in their space. It wasn't like he was going to run away on them mid-procedure, after all.

Ironhide got tired of waiting, flapped her arm, and turned about to roll herself down into truck mode. She lowered her towing apparatus, a wheel lift, and backed up to get it under Ratchet's axle. He jerked away from her again. He was visibly unwilling to be touched. Maybe now was a good time to intervene? But, no, Bumblebee placed a hand on Charlie's shoulder and tentatively shook his head. Sometimes people needed a helping hand; other times, it really was your oldest friends who knew you best.

Ironhide shifted about, reconsidered her approach, and partially transformed: Her truck bed lifted up and a bulky leg unfolded from underneath and extended out behind her. The heel of her foot tapped gently at Ratchet's wheel rims. Ratchet huffed. The toeplate turned inward and hooked his rear wheel but didn't try to pull or move him. It sat there for a moment, knee in the dirt. Then Ratchet's transmission shifted gears, and the ambulance backed up a few inches. Ironhide squeezed so very gently to pull him snugly onto the wheel lift, and then folded her leg back in to truck mode and levered him up into the air. 

Charlie looked back at Bumblebee. Bee smiled at her and winked.

_"Well?" _Ratchet prompted irritably. "What's everyone just standing around for? This is an important procedure!"

"C-coming! Sir!" Charlie jumped. "Uh, Bee! I numbered the patch pieces, remember? Can you grab number 'one' for me? Um, you do know what our numbers look like, right?"

He pounced up and heaved up a piece like a proud puppy, antenna perked up again.

"Great! Yup, that's the one. Okay, just help me by holding it here, I need to spot weld it..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please everyone, give a big applause to the following two new supporters of the written word:  
Charbee Fangirl & Fowo
> 
> Thank you also to my major caretakers who follow me around online day to day and provide mental troubleshooting and who helped try to remember the details of the missing nine chapters: CMY, Artastrophe, Kalachelone, & The Wonderful Shoe
> 
> Thank you also to those followers who hung in there with me through the winter: Bloodette, AristaStarfyr, Megan M, EchoKazul, & Totalitaylorism
> 
> And an extra especial thank you to everyone who stops and leaves comments, because fanfiction writers live and breathe interaction with their readers, and no comment is ever unwanted. Much love!


	33. It's Alkaline

By late afternoon, Ratchet was making his first independent rounds of the scrap yard. In one form—robot form—he remained an amputee; but as a car, his rear suspension system was as fully serviceable and real as car parts came. Charlie started smiling at the realization he'd just regained his mobility. 

"How is it?" she called to the ambulance. She was tracking the real wheels for any sign she'd installed them improperly, as the engine idled gingerly over uneven terrain and shocks extended and contracted to handle the bumps. "Sore?"

"New parts always have an itch..." Ratchet admitted, or complained, or... perhaps simply _educated._ "It's serviceable."

"He means nice work, kid."

"Na, don't be ridiculous," Charlie disagreed as she cracked open and guzzled a bottle of water. All that welding had left her hot, sweaty, and disgusting, and she regretted having no clean clothes. "The day he says 'nice work' will be the day I cry tears of pride and spontaneously grow six or seven additional inches taller."

"Ha. Ha." The ambulance idled up beside them. "I believe you mentioned something about _paint,_ Miss Watson?"

"I tested the spray head and it should work," Charlie confirmed, wiping dry her mouth in the crook of her elbow and resealing the bottle. "But that'll have to be tomorrow, it's getting late and I don't want to paint anything in bad lighting. Tonight we can at least hose you down and scrub all those layers of traffic film off so you're ready for painting in the morning."

Now, ambulances didn't have eyeballs, _per se_, but Charlie got the distinct impression Ratchet shot Bee a suspicious look. "Does this involve one of your human 'car washes?'" he grumbled. "Because I am concerned the automated brushes could hit or dislodge the patch job."

Charlie squinted at him vacantly for a moment, trying to work out why car washes appeared to be a wholly alien idea to the aliens. Didn't they have to wash themselves, wherever they came from? Did they just have decontamination rooms with high-tech sanitation sprays on their space ships, or whatever? Did they microwave themselves clean? No, Jazz had definitely reacted to being hosed down with a water gun, so they had to have some kind of _showers. _But then again, Bee hadn't known what _soap_ was for.

Whelp, whatever. Maybe Cybertronians were so durable and resistant to disease that they weren't particularly skilled at grooming themselves and made due with the bare minimum. Or maybe their health and beauty industry had long ago monopolized all the secrets and then taken them to the grave over those thousands of years of war. Either way, Charlie shrugged to put the patient at ease:

"Relax, our cars aren't as tough as you robots, and some of us are poor and can't afford high-end fancy washes. It just takes a sponge, some water, and the right soap."

Apparently that had blown apart an ambulance's expectations. "You are going to _manually_ clean me?" he sputtered. "That... seems... _highly unnecessary!_"

"Well, do you want to look like you've had your side blown open and your body shoddily repaired with scrap yard metal, with weird glowing purple stains everywhere?" It was a loaded question, because of course he didn't, that was the whole point of the patch job. "C'mon, we'll be super quick about it and you can get some exercise following us to the barn. Bee volunteered to help and everything."

"Oh _joy..._" Ratchet oozed like he'd rather be cannibalized by creatures from the black lagoon. 

"Bbzzuu zuu!" Bee was already_ hopping_ with excitement to show off his karate kid skills. He waved for Ratchet to fall in line, and maybe even made compliance something of an order with whatever words he was messaging to them. Charlie smirked, stuffed her hands in her pockets, and went with.

Muttering indistinct things to himself again, Ratchet eventually felt obliged to follow. He came up beside the two of them, and they walked him to the barn in companionable quiet under the warm late afternoon sun with birds and wind audible in the distance. Bee stooped and heaved few troublesome pieces of debris out of the way. Ratchet puttered along. Ironhide cocked her head to the side and belatedly followed.

* * *

They were a couple minutes into hosing Ratchet down. Bumblebee had the pails of soapy water and was wringing out old raggedy towels at Charlie's instruction. The first step was to get all the dirt and dust off, and some giant robot elbow grease was definitely going to speed things up. 

Ironhide came up and loitered very nearby, like she was curious but too (wo)manly to admit to it.

Bumblebee glanced up nervously at Charlie a few times and kept chirping for her attention. She snickered a few times and bobbed her head.

"Yeah you're doing it right." (Aoo?) "What? Oh. Dip it and give it a little swirl in the water after every pass to get it clean again." (Meep?) "That's right." (Woo...) "You doing fine, Bee!" (Bwwu-wwu?) "Abso-lute-ly."

Charlie was preparing the TFR solution for degreasing the ugly gray lower half of the ambulance. Ratchet had clearly _not _been the subject of any TFR or even TLC for quite some time, nyuk nyuk. She had a sneaking suspicion he hadn't had anything remotely approaching a basic shower since arriving on the dirt ball Charlie called home, and that had probably contributed to her perception of him being old and run-down. Instead of red and white, he was brick and that sad color of an eternally overcast sky. Maybe that suited his disposition, but Charlie was determined to see him shine before they shipped him anywhere. 

"Is this really necessary?" Rachet grumbled, high up on his shocks and looking almost violently uncomfortable. 

"Yeah, I can't exactly paint over dirt," Charlie quirked an eyebrow at him. "The new coat wouldn't match, the paint wouldn't stick, and everything would start flaking off almost immediately. Why?"

Ratchet's response sounded like a deflating elephant. Charlie rolled her eyes and shook her head. Apparently this procedure was simply going to involve a lot of huffy mouth/nose sounds from someone who didn't presently have a mouth, or a nose, and that was that. She heaved up her pail, approached the fore of the ambulance, knelt, and swirled a rag in the traffic film remover. She started scrubbing at his fender. Ratchet _jumped. _

"Hep-hup-hup!" he protested, disengaging his break and rolling back on his wheels. (Bumblebee made a sound of protest.) "Stay where I can _see _you." 

"Really?" Charlie was bemused (and also slightly confused about how any of them even did see in car mode). "We're doing this? I've had an arm elbow deep in your chassis, but this is where you're going to draw the line?"

The ambulance deflated an inch, and, consequentially, sagged back in her direction.

"It's a degreaser," she reassured.

Ratchet didn't respond.

Charlie leaned her elbow on his hood and her chin on her knuckles. She thought about this. "Do you want me to read you the bottle, Ratchet?"

He cleared his throat, and said nothing.

Charlie pulled out the bottle from her welding apron pocket and turned it around: " 'Concentrated Non-Caustic Traffic Film Remover,' " she announced. " 'Guaranteed five times stronger than our competitor's products. Warning, do not allow contact with eyes. Do not breathe in fumes. Use gloves, and wash skin thoroughly with water if contact occurs. Contains sodium metasilicate and—' "

"Sodium _metasilicate?_" Ratchet interrupted.

Charlie looked up. "Yeah, sodium hydroxide's the main agent in caustic TFR, but it tarnishes aluminum and can be a little hard on paint, so usually you save that for the big work vehicles like lorries and stick with non-caustic for the pretty sports cars and their handsome elderly relatives and/or friends. What do you think? Safe?"

How on God's Green Earth did an ambulance manage to look _bashful? _Ratchet did: Like he was embarrassed he'd panicked. "It's... It's just a mild alkaline agent," he finally muttered, before quickly adding, "to us, at least, if not for you. I see you're not wearing gloves, as per the instructions."

Well, she wasn't handling the raw undiluted formula anymore either, but Charlie looked around herself, got those rubber gloves she'd found earlier, and pulled them on. She showed off all ten fingers by wiggling them. "Compliant with all safety recommendations, sir. I'm all clear to continue?"

"Y-yes..." he mumbled like he was actually quite sorry he'd doubted her. 

Charlie saluted and scrunched back down to get at that dirty fender. Her rag was coming off caked black with each swipe. Good thing she had Bee, right? Speaking of Bee: Charlie heard yet another chirp and looked up to see Bee innocently offering Ironhide one of the rags. Ironhide had wandered closer and... she took that rag very slowly, like it was a completely alien object to her. Maybe it was? Charlie didn't see any sign the Autobots had much experience with _textiles. _

Anyway, Ironhide plopped that rag down gently on Ratchet's roof. She rubbed it to the left, and to the right, and then she must have been able to see just how much dirt she was getting off or... maybe she just liked something about _washing things. _

"Heh," Ironhide muttered, and then leaned over and got her elbows into it, and started scrubbing in bigger circles. She didn't say anything else. She didn't start bantering with Ratchet again. That said, he did start sinking down on his shocks and something about the air felt considerably less tense. It was as though he appreciated the truckformer was there and taking part in all this.

The next hour was spent with two queerly adorable robots, both of very different sizes, gently scrubbing down an ambulance who also happened to be a robot, and who—eventually—did look like he might be relaxing just a bit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ratchet, you take your Old Man Bath and you enjoy it. I know they don't have back scrubbers, but otherwise this is as authentic as they come >:|
> 
> In other news: Charlie. SafetyDad has noticed you do not have your gloves on young lady >:| Arm your phalanges with a protective film of rubber this instant!


	34. Minority

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy April everyone! 
> 
> Wherever you are in the world, and whatever stage of the coronavirus you and your family are going through, hang in there. If you're bored, learn a new skill! If you're overworked, take moments to self-sooth and self-comfort whenever you have five extra seconds.
> 
> I told you guys that picking up after I lost all that work would be hard, and that the journey wasn't won yet with just the first chapter I managed to rewrite from scratch. And it's not. But here I am with all of you to solder on.
> 
> Big thanks to my supporters, especially those hanging on this April. Shoutout to:  
Charbee Fangirl,  
Frauke Willms,  
CMY,  
Artastrophe,  
AristaStarfyr,  
EchoKazul,  
TheWonderfulShoe,  
and Totalitaylorism!
> 
> Thank you also to everyone who takes the time to comment on stories like these, both for myself and for other authors. Writing can be a bit like shouting your heart out into a void, and most authors are relieved to hear something other than an echo shout back to them.

"Uh, we might have a problem," Charlie announced because she'd only just finally _seen _it. "Dino is a formula one racer? Same model as the car stuffed in the back of the awning you guys are using as bait?"

Bee's antenna went up. Jazz turned his head. Ironhide hunkered over with her hands on her knees and said, "Gonna have to run us by why that's a 'problem.'"

"They're exclusively high performance track and sport cars," Charlie did her best. "They're not street cars, So you'll never see one being driven on a regular road. Ordinarily I'd advise popping him up on a flatbed so it looks like you're shipping him from place to place, but you're the only truck in the group, and our only flatbed's already going to Ratchet."

The Autobots looked to one another, probably racking their memories and coming to the grim realization she was right.

"Can he just scan another car," Charlie wondered, "like Bee can?" 

"Wrong form factor for his current parts," Ironhide growled. "He'd have to take over new ones to switch in to the same class of vehicle as Bee or Jazz."

"Oh great. Which would be a big expenditure of energon _and_ leave him temporarily vulnerable," Charlie realized, tilting her head back as she tried to think of a better solution, "right before a major mission. Well that's not going to work."

Ironhide raised a brow and glanced to Ratchet.

Ratchet muttered a quiet but approving, "She's quick." Before Charlie could properly enjoy it, he threw out a curve ball none of them liked, saying that, "I can make the drive myself. The new wheel and axel are installed properly; they will work just like any other parts."

"Absolutely _not_," Dino cut in, sounding both disturbed and offended. "I am not ridin'—" he found the right word he wanted, presumably in some kind of onboard dictionary "—_piggyback_ on anyone while our wounded medic limps along behind us."

"You're going to be needed for either a fight or one _hell_ of a stealth operation," Ratchet argued. "I'm going to be holed up recovering with Wheeljack."

(Charlie got distracted wondering what kind of cuss word 'hell' was standing for. It took her a couple seconds to realize it might not be a pun, and that robots might actually have some kind of religion.)

"You're still healing, Ratch," Ironhide disapproved.

"And what of it? Exercise will do me some good, jump-starting my, mnh, _metabolism_."

"Yo, Ratch, you're not fooling anyone," Jazz argued right back. "We've all been injured and put on enginerest by you before; we know how it works. 'Exercise' means idling around a parking lot, not tackling a highway! _Lord_ have mercy."

(Was Jazz just picking up fragments of gospel slang to go with his chosen accent and using them as throwaway translations for 'give me a break?' Charlie didn't know!)

"We need Mirage in fighting shape right now." Ratchet raised his voice. "I can make the journey _just fine_ on my own, so that is what we are going to do."

_"No,"_ Dino underscored as he crossed the gathering to grab Ratchet’s shoulder and confront him. "You's the reason we are gathered here today. If there are sacrifices to be made heading forward, they will be born by _us_, such dat the most capable are lookin' after the most vulnerable. Do you hear me? You will rely on us until such time as you can stand. _That _is the Autobot way."

'The Autobot Way?'

Ratchet looked bitterly uncomfortable with that pill he was about to be forced into swallowing.

Charlie frown between them, thrown for a loop: The tone of voice coming out of Dino/Mirage sounded impassioned, or maybe even _heroic_. It seemed completely out of character until a mind-blowing realization hit her: _This_ was Dino's real character, and she'd never seen it in the past four days for only one reason:

She was the human. Dino was only nasty around humans. Dino was normally _nice._

For the first time in her life, Charlie felt racism as a first hand experience, and it smacked her upside the head and left her reeling in the aftermath of how unfair it was. Not so much that he was mean to her—plenty of people were mean for a wide variety of other reasons—but that she would be missing out on seeing the best parts of his character, and instead forever be stuck with receiving a twisted cheap perversion of Real Dino, all because of something she couldn't and never would be able to change. 

"Here is what we are going to do," Dino was saying, with none of the cold sneer she'd grown so used to. Instead, Dino wielded a tone that modulated up and down with each expression, given all the more life and character by that slight New Yorker accent that (Charlie imagined) had helped earn him his nickname. "Today was slated for last minute preparations, so that is exactly what we're gonna use it for. There has to be a car in this scrapyard I can trade parts with. But we do _not_ delay here. We need to head south and group up with Wheeljack so that we can plan our next move. Once there, we can wait any series of day for my parts to assimilate."

"We're seizing a broadcast tower for a reason," Ratchet growled. "A few days could mean the difference between life and death!"

Dino—_Mirage_—scoffed haughtily, and said, "You underestimate our brothers' skill in hidin'. The humans planned and monitored at great length to identify and isolate you. What matters is that the message is sent at all, and that vorn do not go by in death and silence."

Death and silence! Every word coming out of this bot was stuck in a crossfires between 'Italian Mobster' and 'Knight at King Arthur’s Table.' Traits Charlie had associated with <strike>Dino</strike> Mirage were mixed up and crisscrossed and partially incorrect. Confused and dismayed, she was now uncomfortably aware she was getting a rare window into this other side of him, and that he was _likable, _but that the view was only temporary—and the second he remembered she existed, it'd be gone.

Mirage wasn't an asshole to other Cybertronians. Mirage was only even being an ass (aft?) to Bumblebee because Bumblebee had brought yet another (potentially dangerous) human into their midst. Hell, right now, right in front of her, Bee stepped up and clearly said something to everyone via their special shared radio channel. Bumblebee clapped Mirage's shoulder, and the gesture was returned. The two of them _got along _when humans weren't involved? 

This. _Stunk. _

"They've got the right of it, Ratch," Ironhide weighed in. "When we're making the drive tomorrow, last place I want you to be is on your own. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we get spotted. They're not gonna know Mirage is a weak link, and he's wily enough not to get hit, regardless. They're gonna aim straight for _you_. Pits, I wouldn't be surprised to learn you were specifically targeted to begin with, on account of your skill set."

"Agreed," Mirage announced. "They’ve no honor, and they have not guarenteed a clean kill on any of us. It would be practical to target our doctors. Without medical care, minor skirmishes could turn into a protracted war of attrition, wearin' us down month by month, year by year. An effective strategy would be to start with our best, and work their way down the list; that is yet another reason it is _imperative _you recover."

That was half a compliment, but it didn't make Ratchet’s face any less sour. He must have known he'd lose this fight before he started, but that didn't mean he was happy with it.

Jazz put a hand on his arm. "Ratch, my mech," he said. "You gotta take it easy. Just for now. We want you back at a hundred percent as much as _you _want you back at a hundred percent, but you gotta take it easy. Kay? _Hey. _Look at me. I know, right? I know what you're going through. We all do. But we've got your back."

The tense moment seemed to almost crack open, and fall apart, exposing something vulnerable underneath. The bots all gravitated closer and reached out to Ratchet, laying their arms across his back, or their hands on his shoulders or chest. Watching them, Charlie felt how much of an outsider she really was, and all of the experiences they'd had together long before she or any other human had ever been born. As for Ratchet, he slumped back on his working heel, and was quiet for a bit, and then nodded without growling at any of them.

"Very well," the medic yielded. "You all make a thorough case. But," and his tone indicated he was not going to budge on this next bit, "I insist on going out for a drive today. I want to know exactly where I'm at for tomorrow. And," he sighed and rubbed his face, "I... need some air."

"You sure?" Jazz asked. "I'll go with—"

"I'll be just down the street," Ratchet interjected. "If something happens, it's my leg that's gone, not my radio."

The other bots looked a bit apprehensive over letting him out alone, especially after joining forces to let him know just how much his safety meant to them. They might have scouted around each night, but they had tussled with the Decepticons a few days back.

"That sounds like a good idea," Charlie decided to rescue him from them for a few hours. "I call front seat."

Mirage spun around so fast it would have given a human whiplash, only to be confronted instantly by Bee, who shoved his shoulder and likely 'said' some kind of warning she couldn't hear.

"Hey," Charlie defended herself anyway, "you all want to make sure he's not pushing himself too hard or ignoring his own health, right? Well if there's anything wrong with the parts I just installed, I'll be able to hear the problem rattling about by just sitting in his cab. Car problems tend to make sound."

"We are _not _your_ cars_!" Mirage snarled. "You are not entitled to ride in _any _seat of—!"

Behind him, Ratchet's expression turned unexpectedly devilish. He adopted a sort of visual swagger and interrupted with, "Thank you, Charlie, that sounds fine to me."

"Are you nuts!?" <strike>Mirage</strike> Dino demanded, word choice sliding from knightly to east coast. "Did ya forget the last time you were alone with humans?"

"Come now, Mirage," Ratchet taunted with a firm clap of Dino's/Mirage's shoulder, "this way I'm not distracting anyone from the important task of working out your new frame." He smiled, and it was one of the scariest sights mankind had ever beheld, and even Charlie leaned away. "Unless you want to settle for 'upgrading,'" Sweet Mother Mary, Ratchet did _air quotes_, "into whatever practical joke Jazz finds at the bottom of the scrap heap?"

Dino scowled, undaunted by the threat but maybe realizing (or being told by Bumblebee) that the chick who'd had Ratchet alone and undefended wasn't likely to call in the National Guard _now_ when there'd been plenty of better, earlier, sneakier moments. "If you think it's best," he ground out.

"I do," Ratchet said with all the relish of a person who'd scored an excellent consolation victory. He even made a show of dusting off his hands. "Anyone else got a strut to pick with me? No? Good, because I'll literally be a short wave transmission away. Now if you'd excuse me, I've got an appointment with an _airbrusher _this morning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's gonna look faaabuuuullloouuuussssssssssssssssssss!


	35. For Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Ratchet gets painted, unfortunately without Knockout present.
> 
> Also, woooyeahhh, I am in a roll!

Yesterday's suspicion and uncertainty with regards to strange earth chemicals were gone, not a trace remaining into today, and Ratchet now seemed comfortable under her hand. Charlie wiped him down with a dry cloth to remove any last minute dust or dirt he'd contracted overnight. He was clean. Still incredibly dull, but clean.

"Is the plan to repaint my decals, or paint them out?" he asked, and didn't seem too bothered by either idea.

"I've never had a chance to do any real paint detailing before this," she admitted. "But I'd have loved to try. Only problem is: No red paint. So instead, you're going to be masquerading as a regular, white, second hand delivery truck. That okay?"

"Can't be helped," he confirmed. "Besides, being an ambulance might be a bit of a liability right now."

"Coulda tried for a FedEx or UPS truck, but... Oh well." She bit into an uncooperative duct tape roll when it refused to come up off the roll for her. There! Got it. "Before we start: Remember what I said about hiding this big crack by pasting over it?"

"I do. Have at it."

Charlie looked around for wire cutters or scissors or a box cutter, but found none. She resorted to tearing the duct tape bare-handed. It was easier than she remembered in earlier parts of her life, and she wondered if she didn't have her back-breaking apprenticeship to thank for more than a few things. Eighteen might have been the age of majority in America, but in most ways Charlie had definitely still been a child.

She laid the duct tape as flat as possible, and then hunkered down to get the insides taped over as well, so wind wouldn't whip up under it on the freeway and try to pry it off.

"We've got this expression in English," Charlie mentioned as she worked, "about fixing things with 'duct tape and paper clips.' It's kind of a mix of jokes. Like, on one hand, it can mean a repair job's been done poorly. But at the same time it's basically ascribing magical powers to duct tape and human ingenuity."

"There's a definite novelty in behind held together with organic textiles slathered in polyethylene and adhesive. Hnh! This must be how 'Band-Aids' feel."

"Like a Band-Aid on an amputated leg," Charlie snickered. "There. You're beautiful." She patted him.

Ratchet wouldn't go so far as to say that, and huffed at his unsightly appearance. Charlie tossed away the duct tape and switched to unrolling lengths of masking tape.

"Next step is: I'm gonna mask out everything we don't want to turn white. Mirrors, windows, chrome, taillights, and headlights. Different tape, less sticky, easier to remove."

"Understood."

Charlie was glad he trusted her, but telling him each thing she was going to do before she did it felt appropriate. Less mechanic-y, more person-to-person. She walked around him with a critical eye to make sure she wouldn't forgot to mask anything. She laid some old rags to protect the rear tire on his bad side, because there was where she'd be doing the bulk of the painting. She had some relatively clean, partially mummified old newsprint to block out his windows. 

Charlie had a theory that her robots saw in car mode through one of two means: Either their front headlights, or, perhaps, out their front windshield. Either would explain why Ratchet _hadn't_ been able to see her yesterday, with her crouched down at bumper level but right in front of him: His lights were too far apart and too high up. She left both features for last, and tried to mask them out as respectfully as possible.

"Normally you sand cars down to bare metal before a repaint," she tried to distract him with conversation as she rounded him to test the paint gun. "But I'm guessing your color is integrated and part of your body?"

"You'd be correct," Ratchet said, voice slightly strained.

She glanced up at him and laughed apologetically. "Did I blind you with masking tape, old man?"

"Well," he huffed, and nervousness slipped out of his voice in a chuckle, instead, "better weak tape than a coat of paint."

"I'm back here in your left," she reassured him. Gonna start on the bad side. First coat's primer, then color, then gloss. Here goes, might be cold."

"I'm getting a gloss?" 

"And then a polish," Charlie confirmed as she swept the duct tape, wheel well, and surrounding metal. The dull, matte white primer blotted out imperfections. "It's just how our paints work: Primer, base coat, top coat." It wouldn't be the sexiest of glosses, but a uniform appearance would get them safely south without attracting any real attention. 

"A paint and a polish," Ratchet muttered to himself like it really was something. He gave a heavy sigh, and sounded a little melancholy. "Wasn't how I expected this week to end."

"Hey, if you've got a reputation for gloom to maintain, you can always try driving off on me mid polish. No promises I won't chase after you, though, they're all going to be judging me on how you turn out."

"Oh you already made quite the reputation for yourself in that vein already. At this rate Jazz is going to be following you around whimpering and asking if his turn's next."

"He's out of luck," Charlie snickered. "No silver paint, either." But as she lifted up the paint gun and swept the length of the ambulance, blotting out the red decals of the Red Cross, a pang hit her stomach. She felt almost as if she was _ruining _something. "Hey," she segued, clearing her throat. "Your, um, your paint job. Will it 'repair' itself over time?"

"It's like the epidermis or... perhaps a more accurate analog would be _tooth enamel. _ It will heal, but a coating of acrylic resin's like a wound dressing in these circumstances, keeping rust out. And an easy way to change one's colors in a hurry."

So the markings _might_ be coming back with time? Charlie's fingers loosened on the paint gun trigger, and she stepped forward to steady herself for a second, palm resting across the red stripe on his side.

"Charlie?"

"It's just," she worked past a little lump in her throat and a burn in her eyes, "this is how random people all over the USA could tell something was wrong. These marks."

"What are you talking about, Charlie?"

"S-somebody leaked photos of the attack," she breathed in painfully tight, because this was her story, too, the story of how she'd finally come to be here. "And the evidence that we'd attacked a medic was right there for everyone to see, in white and red. It's technically against international law."

"Are you upset you're blotting my detail work?" Ratchet sputtered, flustered and dismayed by her tears, and uncertain about what she'd just told him, "I can always scan another _ambulance...!_"

That _did _make Charlie feel a lot better. Still, now that she'd started talking about that picture, she wanted to say the rest of it. To admit: "It's what woke me up. Shocked me back into being... I don't know. _Me. _Instead of whoever I was pretending to be.

"I went to the store to get some groceries, and the picture was splattered across the face of the National Enquirer. And in big, bold, capital letters, it said: THIS IS A WAR CRIME. And I left." She rubbed tears from her face. "I dropped everything where I was standing, and I got in my car, and I left. I drove like death was after me, and every place I stopped to pee, that picture was on every single news station on every single TV. They were all arguing with one another over whether aliens—or worse, _machines_—counted.

"You guys have been made into _action figures_. Little boys and girls all over the country hugged their toy Transformers, looked at that big red stamp that meant, 'Good Robot,' and then looked up at mom and dad and asked _why? _Did we do this? Are we bad guys? Why did we hurt the good guys?"

_(Don't worry mom,_ said the ten year old boy, who'd seen the purple Decepticon stamps on the underbelly of the jet, _it's only a bad one.)_

Ratchet was silent in the wake of her outburst. Charlie took another long, stabilizing breath, and wiped her face again, and then stepped back and gave the decals one last look—for now. Then she sprayed them down with a primer she couldn't afford to let set overnight, because they were on a time table, and this was, after all, only a temporary fix.

And when Ratchet finally did speak, his voice was very low, and, reverent and _hushed,_ and what he said was:

"So it wasn't all for nothing, then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strangely legitimate reasons for why cartoon robots only ever seem to socialize with human children + 1.


	36. WoooOOOOoooooOOOOoooo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which mechanic and apprentice go for a short drive and enjoy the countryside.

The speed limit said fifty miles per hour, but they were actually hovering closer to thirty-five. That was still a respectable pace, given everything this particular ambulance had been through, and certainly enough to heat up his engine and listen for any incriminating vehicular health issue noises.

Nothing rattled or clattered or shook. The belts were quiet. The rear wheel and replacement suspension were carrying their weight. The transmission—a component which Charlie had helped Ratchet replace only a few days previously—shifted with only a modest little clunk at each intersection, and even seemed to be getting better as they went along.

Green hills and waving trees passed them in either side. It was a nice day to be out.

Charlie sat on the driver's side, just in case they were spotted, but she kept her feet to herself and didn't presume to touch the wheel. It turned left and right with the grace of an experienced driver. By no means did she feel cramped.  After living in a two-seater for a week on her trip East, the open front bench seat of the ambulance might as well have been a king sized bed. There was so much _room_. 

Heavy duty truck builds were like this; they had the luxury of a cushy ride and a spacious cab. The upholstery was thick and a dull, brick red. And while Ratchet was absolutely no young, hot-blooded mustang with low profile tires and nick-of-time handling, his tires were sized to make the most of his shocks and provide the easiest possible ride.

Charlie listened attentively with each acceleration and each brake. Then she settled back into her seat and sighed, content in a job well done. If Ratchet ended up on his own tomorrow, for any reason, at least he'd be able to drive. "You sound good. How'd you feel?" she asked.

"Compared to where I started?" the medic asked. "Much better." He slowed and turned on his blinker to take the next left. Of _course_ Ratchet used his blinkers, even in the middle of nowhere, without another car in sight. "It's good to be driving, even if I was a little, mn, over-ambitious in suggesting I could handle a freeway."

"My Mom does the same thing," Charlie smirked. "Tries to carry the world on her back and act like everything's fine, even when it's obviously not."

"Hmph!"

"She's also bad at talking about feelings," Charlie grinned. "She only wants to know what's broken and how to fix it. People think nurses are soft, gushy, emotional people. She's more of an oblivious workaholic."

"I think I might respect your mother."

Charlie laughed. "For my eighteenth birthday, she gave me a pink bike helmet."

Ratchet did not see the problem. "Is the gifting of personal safety equipment somehow offensive in your culture?"

"It was _super _dorky looking, like something you'd get a small child. Showed a complete lack of awareness of basic stuff about me, like what my style even was, or how my classmates saw me."

"Mnhmm." Ratchet was skeptical this was a valid reason to refuse safety equipment.

"And it was happy. _Way_ too happy-looking. Mom wanted everyone to be smiling and upbeat, all the time, for absolutely no damn reason."

Oh! That converted hm: Ratchet made a noise of disgust.

"She was just trying to 'fix' our feelings. Except I wasn't being subtle about what I wanted for my birthday at all, so that just added salt to the wound."

"What _did _you want, dare I ask?"

"A car."

"Aha."

"Independence, freedom, mark of adulthood. But then, after work, late that afternoon, when I was picking over Uncle Hank's scrap yard for parts, the wind suddenly kicked up, blowing aside this piece of tarp and, lo, revealed this ancient, beat-up, dirty yellow beetle. It was a magical birthday moment."

Ratchet snickered. "Oh, I'm sure it was 'magical.'"

"Only later did I learn I'd adopted an amnesiac large robot boy, who had no idea who he was or how he'd gotten there. His first course of action was to curl up in a ball in the corner of the garage with his hands over his head. He'd later poke his head into the house and wreck the place floor to ceiling. Out of innocent curiosity, you understand."

"Oh-hoh," Ratchet was laughing in sympathy.

"He was also scared of a wrench, not sure if that's your fault and his fear of upsetting you is so powerful even amnesia can't muffle it, or If that's just a generalized species-wise phobia."

Ratchet wheezed and cackled and coughed a little like he was trying not to laugh as hard as he was. Maybe because he was still feeling bad for throwing things at her. It wasn't a very wet-sounding cough, at least.  


"How are your _lungs?_" she suddenly remembered to ask.

"Respiration's fine," Ratchet cleared his throat. "Digestion's picking up. Gonna be a little rough around all my edges for a few weeks, but that's part of the process."

"I almost forgot to ask." Charlie tapped the rear wall of the cab with her thumb. "Do you have the back room to go with this outfit?"

"Ayup!" Ratchet confirmed a little smugly. 

"Is it bare bones, cabinets and floors, or how does that work?"

"I'm the real deal, kid," Ratchet answered, still sounding quite smug. "It's kit to the nines back there. Antibiotics, bandages, medicines, trauma kits; even managed to get my servos on the big gear like stretchers and defibrillators; only thing I don't have is perishables with a short lifespan: Blood bags, most vaccines, antivenins."

"Oh!" That half answered another of Charlie's questions. "So if something were to happen to _me_..."

Nobody could have prepared her for Ratchet's dark and cheery: "You can be sure I'd do a better job of fixing you than to try and weld lopped off pieces of dead humans into all the holes."

"Oh-ho _God!" _Charlie blurted, loving it. "Is that what you tell all the cute alien kiddies to scare them?"

"Of course not. If I'm trying to scare them," his voice turned conspiratorial, "I've got _loads_ better than that." She could hear the wink without seeing it. 

Charlie laughed some more.

The drive was pleasant. The world outside was bright and lush.

"Where's it all go when you transform?" she eventually had to wonder. "I mean it’s not like you were carrying a stretcher inside you in robot form. Were you?"

"Ah." Ratchet said it like this was a topic he'd meant to get into with her eventually, and was happy to have it brought up now when he had the time to cover it. "Most of it's tucked away into subspace, which is wherethe majority of my important organs are right now."

"Subspace?"

"Every bot has access to a certain, limited amount of subspace, differs from mech to mech. If I were to say the words 'fourth dimension,' what would that mean to you?"

Charlie had been more of a rock and car enthusiast than a sci-fi buff, even after her sci-non-fi encounter. But rare was the human who hadn't seen at least a couple episodes of Star Trek, or seen one of the big blockbusters like Star Wars or Planet of the Apes. She'd also been forced to read an unfortunate amount of high school English literature.

"Are we talking like—what, like a Tesseract? Or Hyper Space?"

"Hyper Sp—That's _purely_ fictional," he huffed. "What is a 'Tesseract?'"

"Also fiction. I guess it was a dumb question; you probably haven't read many human young adult novels."

"I should say _not._ Never seen the appeal of fiction much, myself. Orion was the one who loved reading..."

"Well," Charlie did try to remember, "I think A Wrinkle in Time was one of the only books I've ever read that’s been able to paint a compelling view of good and evil I hadn't seen before, and kind of liked."

"Oh really?" Ratchet didn't sound impressed.

"Yeah, it has this world devouring depiction of evil—petty standard there—but instead of being demonic or chaotic or horrible to look at, it makes everything perfect. And identical. And the same. And the people who manage to defeat it aren't the chosen heroes or anthropomorphized stars with magic powers, it's instead this random imperfect kinda ugly girl, because creativity and uniqueness and freedom and diversity are the biggest sources of good in the universe."

Ratchet snorted. "Sounds like something Orion would have loved. No, I don't mean 'Hyper Space.' What if I say 'pocket dimension?'"

"Uh. A small dimension... that's... pocket sized? And accessible?"

"Good enough," Ratchet approved. "Moving something into subspace, or 'subspacing' it, to use the colloquialism, is a natural thing for us Cybertronians. It's a bit like you have a glove compartment but instead of being able to see the exterior of the dash board and guess the dimensions of the glove department from that, it opens up into a tiny little dimension you carry with you."

Charlie puzzled over that. "So you are carrying a lot more stuff, parts and gear and otherwise, than anyone can see at a given moment? They're just tucked away in magic space."

"Coooorrect. Except for the part where it's not magic."

"Oh. Well that's convenient." She thought about it. "Are you the only person who can reach in there?"

"Nope. Had a squirrel climb in a port once, He was damned lucky there was enough air in there to last him till the twins managed to fish him out, and that I have good enough thermoregulation that he didn't overheat or freeze. He was right sandwiched into all my parts and I couldn't have transformed without obliterating him."

"Ooh, okay, note to self, subspace is not a convenient bullet-proof safe room," Charlie winced and patted the dash. "There there, Ratchet, squirrels happen to the best of cars."

Ratchet harrumphed in agreement, squirrels certainly did.

"Did you say 'twins?'" Charlie realized.

"Oh," Ratchet faltered. He sighed. "Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. Now there’s a pair I've thrown things at. You'll probably hear us reference a lot of names. Friends who are in hiding in Earth, or... those we've lost along the way. And some we don't know either which way about, who might be still out there, marooned on some forsaken rock, waiting for a ride."

"Kinda puts it in perspective how lost and spread out a bunch of robots can get when they can wait around for _thousands of years _to get off that rock."

"If they correctly put themselves into standby, they certainly can..."

"What’s the twins' case?"

"Alive, at least last that I saw them," Ratchet answered. "But Bumblebee says that when he and Wheeljack were mining data files and found out about the attack planned on me, there were also pictures of Sideswipe. I don't know what that means, considering the two of them are almost never separated... I'm thinking we might find out when we reach Wheeljack. Praying it's good news."

Charlie had to ask: "Are you religious?"

"Not particularly," he answered, in the same way a human might answer the exact same question, with a long exhale And an invisible shake of the head. "It's hard to have much faith in a higher power. I always considered talk of fate or miracles to be a cop-out to avoid taking responsibility and doing the real work that miracles require. But now and then, here or there... some days it keeps slipping back in."

That was a big topic right there, and Charlie wasn't sure Ratchet was the one she ought to get into it with. She wasn't sure Ratchet needed to be thinking about this right now, either. His mood was dripping melancholy, and that was an unfortunate sharp turn after sharing more than a few laughs. She held in her questions for another day or another narrator, and looked around trying to find something to change the topic with. Her eyes settled on the contraption overhead that controlled the radio and—

"—Ratchet?" she asked "You, ah, you really are an ambulance, right?"

"Hmm? In as much as anything can be an ambulance, yes. Why?"

"Well... It's just that I've never ridden in an _ambulance_ before."

Pregnant silence stretched across the front cab of the vehicle...

...And then, in a suspicious voice, and sounding like he was in the brink of revoking all respect for her, humanity, and mechanics in general, Ratchet asked, "You want me to run my siren, don't you."

Charlie didn't answer, grinning hopefully.

Ratchet heaved the mother of all sighs, and turned back onto the road headed home. A switch above her flicked. On came flashing red and white lights, and a loud shrill call filled the air:

WoooooOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOOooooOOOO!

Charlie rolled the window down and stuck her head out, and absolutely copied it, "Wooohoooohooohoo!" laughing the whole time, while Ratchet muttered unintelligible things to himself about humans and children and ridiculous, even though—honestly speaking—he must have been enjoying her reaction, or he wouldn't have gone and done it, now would he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She's blending in with their usual cast of friends by channeling her inner eight year old.


	37. Trade Offs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Muahahaha, four chapters this month, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

The rest of the Autobots had been busy while Ratchet was away. As the ambulance rolled back into the center of the scrap yard, they found Jazz skipping along Ironhide, who was carrying an entire sedan up upon her shoulder. She set it down in a line up, of sorts, where Bumblebee was surveying five other vehicles.

Bee glanced Ratchet¡s direction, and then stood up taller on his toes and waved. Charlie popped open the driver's seat and waved back as she swung herself out. "Hey Bee!"

_"What's new pussycat, whoaaa-oo-ohh-oo-oh-oo?"_

"How was the tire?" Ironhide called, while Jazz knocked on Ratchet's white hood and whistled, saying, "Looking sharp, my mech!"

"It was fine," Ratchet answered, transforming awkwardly onto just one foot and reaching out to grab a scrap pile for balance. "What's the situation here?"

(Charlie hadn't seen Ratchet transform since his polish, and was happy to see he still had some red on him. Although, that also meant some of his white hadn't been repainted or shined. The differences in luminosity were clearer in white than they'd been in black and yellow. Hmm, well... Oh well. Charlie was plenty happy to scrub down a Sentient Car, but somehow it felt inappropriate to offer to polish a Large Metal Person. Although, maybe that was the real reason Ratchet had gotten so flustered when the three of them had 'manually washed' him the night before?)

"Haven't exactly found an ideal new bod," Jazz admitted, voice lowered just a titch. Charlie glanced around and understood why: By the look of things, Dino was about to go from a glossy, beautiful, blue, classic Formula One racer into... someone's beige jalopy that had been sitting out in the rain for half a decade or more.

And though Dino might have talked a brave game with Ratchet, he was the real star of today's makeover madness, and he didn't look happy about it: He sat a few yards away, watching the line-up and rubbing his wrist blades slowly back and forward against one another. The posture looked like ill-concealed anxiety. She got the impression he was going to wait for the rest of his party to decide which car sucked the least, and then take over it as fast as possible, like ripping off a bandage or jumping into a cold pool.

"What exactly happens when he picks one?" Charlie asked, and kept her voice down to try not and aggravate the bot.

"He sheds his present alternate form," Ratchet informed gently, "which accounts for around half of his body mass, and switches in to the new one. Any part he can adapt into the new form, he can try and keep, but..." Ratchet tilted his head with a thoughtful inhale between his teeth.

Charlie understood where he was going. "There aren't many parts shared between Formula One racers and street cars. They’re only _conceptually_ alike, but physically they're completely different..."

The medic nodded. "Mirage is up there with Jazz and Bumblebee in terms of adaptability. He'll be able to modulate his parts more than you realize. But he’s also got to put on weight. He needs some parts to alter his power train, and his present suspension system will have to be dropped..."

"That's not a major operation?" Charlie wondered, because they had mere hours before nightfall and they were supposed to head out bright and early in the morning. 

Ratchet chuckled. "You'll see soon enough. We'd be more in a bind if Mirage wasn't presently at the peak of health. So, count us lucky in that regard, I suppose..."

"Yo, Ratch, he _has _to keep his engine," Jazz whispered (loudly). "Nobody's said it yet, but it's gotta be said: You can't make him drop that beautiful high-end tubo-charged marvel of engineering for some crummy native four-cylinder. _It's wrong._"

"Jazz..." Ironhide growled, coming up behind him.

"It's wrong, my mechs! You can't take a speedster's engine from him! Can't! It'd be wrong for any other car, and it's triple wrong for him! C'mon, whazzamatterwithyou? Morale's half the battle!"

Charlie knew there was a _lot _different between Formula One engines and street car engines, but not so much that you couldn't jury rig one to run the other. The add-ons were to milk as much speed from a light block as was physically possible. 'Adapting' between them sounded possible... especially for a species that could scan similarly sized forms and heal metal.

As Jazz and Ironhide started to argue, Charlie looked around. Maybe she could help? She found Bee stepping up just beside her, and he took a second to muse her hair.

"Hey!" she grinned, waving off his hand. "Do you think I should have a look at...?" Charlie gestured towards the lineup.

Bumblebee nodded his approval, so Charlie hurried along the line of ugly sedans and rust-eaten muscle cars to get a better look at what they were working with. Hmm.

"Honestly," Ironhide grumbled at the others, "I'm seein' it as a simple matter of how much rust we're willin ta let 'im deal with. Car on the far left's got a poor fit, but it also held up under the humid atmosphere the best."

"It's not that _simple_, my mechs," Jazz disagreed. "Those cars _suck._"

"Think if it as a placeholder, Jazz," Ratchet sighed, "He can scan something more appropriate on the road. He just has to switch form factors."

"Stop and _think_ about what you just said," Jazz stage-whispered back (They were most probably keeping their voices down as a kindness to Dino, but, well, unless he was partially _deaf, _Dino could most probably hear every word.) "We're lucky Dino can upgrade to a heavier weight category at all. Every extra ton of metal you pile on top of him's going to be harder in his spark!"

"I ain't worried about the weight," Ironhide disagreed. "What he _really _don't need is to suddenly take in a massive rust infection."

Charlie grimaced, especially because Ratchet had gone on about rust being 'necrotic tissue' plenty of times before. This sounded like deliberately infecting yourself with a case of shingles. She quickened her pace.

Given a shop and a week or two, and Charlie would have been able to soak individual parts of a car and sand them down to get the oxidation off. Maybe he'd be able to clean himself up down the road?.

Okay: Two cars in the lineup had ended up on the lot recently, later than everything else. The first was a shiny new '89 Camaro—until you got to the back seat, where the entire vehicle ended abruptly in a pancake. Typical. Some rich kid had gotten a sports car on their sweet sixteen, and then promptly cut off a semi-truck on a highway. Squish. 

Nobody had to explain the trade-off here: Camaros were sexy, reasonably light, and the 'bots clearly had a sport and pony car theme going on. She estimated the full car weighed in at a little over three thousand pounds, which wasn't heavy for a street car but already well over doubled a standard Formula One race car. The biggest problem was where was the other half of the car going to come from.

Would he just keep his existing parts and try to adapt them, instead? Could a healthy mech somehow straighten out so much scrap? Would they just chop off the rear end of another car and slap it on the back? A Camaro was one of Bee's old forms; could he help them extrapolate what the missing rear end probably looked like?

Charlie had no idea, but then she also only had the roughest mental picture of what happened when a Cybertronian 'took' a new alternate form. The fact that it got its own _verb_ made Charlie doubt any real shop work was involved. Somehow, it was going to be quick. Maybe, uh, maybe something like a hermit crab switching shells? 

She couldn't know and Ratchet was clearly too busy arbitrating an argument about rust vs. style back there to give her a proper lecture on the topic. Charlie considered warning them all that modern Camaros were pretty but their engines were nothing to write home about, but_, then again,_ Dino hopefully wouldn't be _taking _this shit engine. He just needed the proper space and piping to cram an adapted Formula One engine in its place. And that space and piping at least _existed._

What were the other options? Okay: The other 'new' vehicle was in halfway decent condition. A glance underneath said it had been up north and weathered some winter salt and was down all four wheels. Breaks looked questionable, but it didn't look like it belonged in a scrap yard. What even was this thing? A Buick Reatta? Never heard of it. 

Standing back and looking at it, Charlie could see (and hear) why this appeared to be Jazz's nomination for best trade in. It was a reasonably light-looking two-seater, and it was trying very hard to pretend it was sportier and sexier than it really was. When she popped up the hood to have a look at the engine, however, she found a sad sight.

A voice just above her head _nearly scared the literal shit out of her: _"Whattaya think?"

Charlie jumped in place so hard she banged her head on the hood. Somewhere, Bee made a sympathetic coo. Ratchet called Jazz's name in annoyance,

Cursing silently, Charlie backed out from under the hood and looked up (and up and up) to see Jazz crouching there, _right _behind her. How had he crossed the yard without her hearing anything, much less hunkered down right in her personal space? Had she been focusing _that hard_? She could have leaned backwards and fallen straight into him.

At least he was wearing a lopsided expression someplace between a wince and a smirk, and rubbed the back of his neck and looked decently bashful for having scared her. 

"Uh, h-hi Jazz. I wouldn't pick this thing."

Jazz perked up, intrigued as to her reasoning, so Charlie lifted the hood back up and showed him the pitiful V6 engine within. Jazz tilted over sideways almost at a ninety degree angle to see, but then recoiled, stuck out his tongue and agreed: "Ewwwwww."

The standard engine on a Formula One was almost always a tricked out, over-engineered V8, with a lot of attention given to fuel injection and aspiration. Dino's present alt mode matched the Formula One car they had tucked away under the awning as a decoy, and that thing was a beautiful Lotus, probably circa 1979 or 1980, with a handsome Cosworth DFV engine that barely fit inside its sleek, low-to-the-ground little body. 

"I'm guessing," she said, "if Dino wants a chance in hell of adapting his original engine to his new body, we should pick a car that came as close to his present engine specs as possible, in terms of size, function, and power?"

"Yeah," Jazz rubbed his chin, sizing up the other cars on the lineup. "But _scrap,_ that's not looking easy. Not unless I want to risk _stealing _something..."

Oh boy. That's just what they needed while in hiding: Grand automobile theft. Well, "Don't tell Ratchet," she whispered back, "But my professional opinion as a gearhead is: No confining an alien racing machine into the body of some pony car wannabe that can't even break 200 horsepower."

"Heh," Jazz grinned down at her and lifted a hand for a very low high-five. She gave it to him, and then rubbed her head and looked around as Jazz brought his less-than-stellar findings to the others.

The ugly cream-colored saloon cars Ironhide had picked out didn't look ready to impress her. The vehicles _between _them might have had a formidable engine or two, but they had gaping rust holes in their outer paint, and Charlie figured she ought to get over there and see just how chewed up they were on the inside. She walked down the line-up, looking from car to car to car.

Not a single one of these cars was blue.

...Okay, maybe that was a stupid thing to fixate on, but Dino wasn't going to be the weight he was meant to be, the size he was meant to be, the shape he was meant to be, the speed he was meant to be, or even the _color_ he was meant to be. Maybe he'd at least be able to change _some _of those things later on with a well-placed scan and some 'imitation' of a better car, just like Bee had. Still, Charlie tried to think of someone she liked, instead of Dino, swapping permanently into any of these cars...

Charlie rubbed her face.

They were all _bad, _all of them, weren't they? Half would make him sick, and the other half would leave him broken, fat, or tired. If only they'd had more _time..._

Charlie glanced at her hand to make sure her head wound from the other day hadn't reopened when she'd gone and bonked herself on the Reatta hood. It hadn't, thank goodness. 

She peered Dino's way only to find his yellow eyes fixed on her, and that was a less-than-comfortable sensation. Had she done something wrong? Probably not. Dino was grumpy just remembering she _existed. _Determined not to let him bother her, Charlie thoroughly checked out the two rusted cars to be sure they were rusted (they were) and the three sedans to make sure they sucked (they did).

Examination complete, Charlie turned back towards the other bots, and was just about to return to Bumblebee's side and convey her less-than-expert opinion, when a realization tickled across the back of her brain and she slowed. 

Charlie's stomach fell to the ground. Her breath caught in her throat.

_Lightweight. Powerful eight cylinder engine. Well-kept and rust-free. _Not blue, no, but _handsomely_ red.

"Ratchet?" Charlie asked quietly, and then realized they were deeply embroiled in a heated conversation and she needed to project: "Jazz? Ratchet?" They were arguing about ancient history right now. "Jazz! Bee! _Guys!_"

Charlie put her fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill high pitched whistle. 

A bot or two turned to look at her, and the others glanced over each other's shoulders. At least one of them looked surprised humans could whistle. Charlie would have found it endearing at any other time.

Instead, she jerked her thumb behind herself, not daring to look, and asked them:

"What about my Corvette?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Oh, Charlie, he doesn't deserve that....


	38. Hermit Crab

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When last we saw our heroes, Charlie was volunteering a very important car...
> 
> May Shoutouts to all my supporters, especially in this time of adversity!  
Thank you very much to a returning Bloodette!  
Especial thank you to CMY, Lucy, and The Wonderful Shoe!  
Thank you to Fowo, Totalitaylorism, Kaila Johynson, AristaStarfyr, and Charbee Fangirl!

Bumblebee's eyes widened and he gave a shrill whoop of alarm, rapidly signaling 'no, no!' with his hands. Ironhide scuffed the dirt, turned her gaze up to the clouds, and possibly muttered a thanks. Jazz started grinning like his birthday had come early (did robots have birthdays?), but he didn't yet say anything—yet.

Ratchet looked concerned; maybe he regretted not explaining the situation a little better. "Charlie," he lifted his hands to illustrate, "this process will _destroy _the car it's done to. Once the vehicle's taken, there—well, realistically speaking, there's no reversing the procedure."

"Yeah," Charlie agreed without missing a beat. "I got that part."

"You did." Ratchet sat back on his heel<strike>s</strike>, hands dropping to his side. "Well, so long as you know..."

"Will it _work, _though?" she prompted all of them. "It meets the grocery list of requirements, right?" She counted off on her fingers, "Room for an eight cylinder engine, relatively light, right overall shape, and, most importantly: No rust. And people back in the day even used to use them for a bit of racing. It's an_ old_ car; does that part matter?"

"No, no," Ratchet glanced at Bee, perhaps distracted trying to work out what had come over him and why he was acting so dramatic. "When it comes to native vehicles, it's more a matter of whether there's room in the schematic for adapted Cybertronian parts to fit and connect to one another in a loose semblance of 'normal.' As I mentioned, Mirage is very adaptable and will be able to keep more of his original parts than you realize."

"I peeked under the hood," Jazz confided brightly, "and scanned it already 'cause I was thinking of _copying_ it. It'll _totally _work!"

Bee made a mournful sound, circling about in the background; Charlie avoided looking at him, scared he'd talk her out of it.

"Will it help?" Charlie pressed. "And not just in a small way? Dropping his original engine or accepting rusted parts, they're both really bad outcomes, right? Putting him significantly below peak condition either way?"

She got something of a snort from Dino, but it was only really Ratchet's answer she was interested in: "That's correct, it would help—a lot."

"Well that's the end of it then: what are we waiting for?" Charlie demanded. "Let's do it!"

"Aaawwww _Yyyyyeeahhh_!" Jazz danced around the lineup and reached Charlie, fist-pumping. "You had no idea how badly I wanted to ask, little mama! But, like... I figured it'd be rude to take a human's only set of wheels on account of, you know," he tapped one of his tires, "them not having any of their own..."

"That's—that's really sweet, _thank you_." Now that she realized just how hungrily they'd been eyeing her car, she was touched they'd intentionally kept it off the menu. They hadn't even _asked,_ and might not have said a word had she not volunteered it. "But, assuming Bee's willing to let me ride with him, I think I'll manage."

Bee crooned unhappy somewhere behind her, sounding mixed up in his feelings. Of _course _she'd be riding with him, but Charlie, _Charlie. _He trudged towards her.

"You positive?" Jazz grinned, twirling past her, inching nearer to the corvette. "Not gonna have a ticket home after this! Last chance to back out!"

_I am home.   
_

"Positive," she confirmed. "Just, uh, give me a second to clear all my stuff out. Bee? Do you have like... any extra space to help carry my things, or how does that work?"

Bee joined her with a low warble, rolling forward into car mode and looking none too happy about any of this. But he popped his trunk and Charlie went and emptied her Corvette. _Dad's Corvette. _She got out her food provisions, her dirty clothes, and her blankets. She checked the trunk to make absolutely sure she'd got every gear and tool out. 

While she did this, Ironhide helped Ratchet hop gingerly closer. Dino stood and met them halfway, growling something under his breath that was unintelligible at a distance. Jazz flit around the Corvette, picking scrap off the ground and tossing it farther way, presumably clearing space. 

With everything safely transferred to Bee's trunk, Charlie made one more pass of the vehicle. She leaned down to check under the seats and floor mats. She found more than one quarter. And then, at the last second, she remembered to open the glove compartment box and pull out the car's registration and insurance information. No sense wasting that. She looked up as a shadow came over her.

It was Jazz, and he took a moment to wipe a finger down the Corvette's red paint. "Anybody tell you you've got good taste in cars?" he asked.

"I think you might be flattering yourself with that question," Charlie joked back, glad to have someone smiling and teasing her. Bee was still moping. "Seeing as I appear to be hanging out with bunch of beauties as we speak."

Jazz jumped back with a big smile and did an elaborately flourished bow.

"Okay!" Charlie closed Bumblebee's trunk out of habit more than necessity, and turned to flag down the larger bots. They were approaching from behind. "She's all clear."

"You're going to want to stand back at least five to ten meters," Ratchet called out prescriptively, and Charlie hurried to comply as Bee rolled back into robot mode behind her.

"Thanks for this," Ironhide mentioned as she crossed her arms. "Big load off our shoulders."

"I love this car," Charlie admitted, and then decided not to elaborate so her voice wouldn't crack. "But she and I aren't the ones who might need to fight off the US Military and/or evil alien invaders, so it seems an easy trade-off to make."

Ironhide grunted in approval. Bumblebee knelt down behind Charlie and played her name at her, and Charlie flashed a smile back his way without really seeing him. _It's too late now, Bee. I already gave permission._

Then, Charlie heard the sound of a transformation somewhere behind her, and goosebumps prickled up all over her skin. Her pulse began racing in her ears. _It's happening. _She looked back at her car, a vehicle she'd spent countless hours under, repairing, refining...

Jazz waved as if to guide Dino into place, like the crew out on the tarmac preparing for an airplane to land. Charlie glanced over just in time to see that beautiful, low-profile, drag racing body slip into view, painted a beautiful blue and sporting a wickedly curved tail fin that looked like it had been altered slightly from the original design.

Dino made a wide circle and lined himself up directly behind the larger vehicle. His transmission eased temporarily into neutral and his engine revved.

"You're all clear, Mirage!" Jazz called said he hunkered down to watch. "Don't miss or I'll laugh for days!"

<strike>Dino</strike> Mirage growled something under his breath. He sank down low on his wheels, low enough to lay the belly of the vehicle on the ground and seeming unnaturally flexible in the moment. 

"Hold up, hold up both of you," Ratchet interrupted. "Mirage, do you want any help? I can still—"

"I'm _fine_ Ratchet," the racer replied.

"Yeah c'mon Ratch my mech," Jazz teased, "we ain't all as old and inflexible as you!"

"Ooh-ho-ho, is that how you wanna phrase it?" Ratchet asked, sucking in a mean breath between his teeth, but before an argument could break out, Mirage began to rev, and rev, and rev. The roar of sound drowned everyone else temporarily out, or at least discouraged conversation, and with it a deep yellow glow began to leak out from every seam and crack of the race car.

The glow intensified, brighter and brighter. The racer started to look like a black shell laid over a pool of molten gold. It was so bright, and so _yellow_, that it made everything else look dark by comparison. Belatedly, Charlie recalled that Mirage's optic color was yellow, and she wondered if the two were related.

That was when the car started to... well, 'explode' wasn't the right word for it, unless you used it in the context of 'an exploded view;' like sketched diagrams of the interior of ships or buildings that gave an 'exploded view' of the interior. Parts of the car seemed to lift off and levitate slowly away from the core, as if pushed there by some immense internal pressure. Tires pushed slowly outward, followed by rims, and the hood of the engine.

And within that nest of parts, among the glow, something seemed to _wriggle, _like a person squirming out of tight fitting clothing at the end of a long day, or a snake shedding it skin. As it moved, the parts bobbed after it.

"Three," Jazz counted eagerly, and the glowing, partially exploded racer seemed to compress backwards like a spring, "two...!"

With a hot snarl of energy, something metallic and glowing _leaped _from the shell of the Formula One racer, carrying some parts with it and thrusting out others away from its body with violent force. Wheels fell away. Shed metal and sloughed circuits dropped to the earth. For one crystal clear instant, Charlie could make out an alien engine changing shape mid-leap, properties transforming in a ripple along its sides.

Then the glowing yellow presence hit the Corvette like a diver striking water. And, like water, the Corvette was _displaced_ by its arrival.

The car split apart along dozens of new seams. It’s parts were briefly forced out from the center, like it, too, was 'exploding.' The Corvette engine, unnecessary aside from the space and configuration of parts it offered Mirage, went _flying _up into the air and landed In front of them with a thud, lodging into and sticking up out of the earth at an awkward angle.

Charlie flinched. She felt Bumblebee's hand grip her shoulder, trying to steady her. 

Red-painted metal slammed back down into place place along the body in a cacophony of transformation noises. New wheels clamped themselves onto bowing axles, themselves all white-hot and changing before her eyes; the smells of super-heated metal and melted plastic filled the air. The new pieces locked into place. Gold light stopped leaking out of the seams. Wheels squealed, an alien engine roared, and then a shining red and blue Corvette burst out from under a slough of rejected car parts, kicking up a spray of dirt and debris and leaving behind the stink of ozone. 

* * *

"YES!" Jazz exultantly cheered, running after the jumped up vehicle. "Lookin' _good,_ 'ragie! _WOO!_"

"Whelp, glad that's behind us," Ironhide grumbled, turning around to observe.

"One less thing to worry about," Ratchet agreed, doing likewise. "Unless there's a debonding issue between mesh layers because he didn't seek the help of a trained medic, in which case we'll be hearing about it all tomorrow."

Bee grimaced, trying to tune them all out, and their relief at the convenience of it all. Mirage shot around the scrap yard behind them, fuel lines still pumping with extra energon plasma. 

The old eight cylinder engine which Mirage had flung aside stood like a dramatic tombstone before the scene, and Charlie had reached out vainly in its direction like you would towards the body of a dead thing you didn't actually dare to touch. All around it smoldered the picked carcass of what had once been a vehicle. About a third of the metal exterior had been left behind, still painted a deep, finely aged red.

The carnage of car parts and oil stains drew her stare across the nearly unidentifiable and equally gutted remains of a thoroughly digested track racer. three of it's wheels had dropped dead away; the last was rolling past like a tumbleweed on a human kids' cartoon. 

Charlie sucked in a strangled intake of air. Bee was braced. She spun back to him and her optics—_eyes—_were wide, but for an instant it looked like she couldn't even see Bumblebee standing there with his hands held out to her. She looked like she wanted to run away and hide someplace. But then she focused on him, and her face broke into this _horrible_ expression of loss. She reached up to him. Bumblebee pressed her into himself. She buried her face in his hip. His antenna drooped and he rubbed his hand up and down her back strut, her spine_._

It didn't feel appropriate to try speaking through song right now. It would have felt _irreverent. _He couldn't project emotions through his electromagnetic field, because she had no way of detecting his meaning. He rolled his head, chewed his mouth guard, and took a deep inhale, and—not for the first or last time—wished he could just _talk_ to her.

Mute, he resorted to trying to speak with touch. He laced his digits gently through her hair, and rubbed her neck and shoulder girdle. He tried to tell her how grateful he was for what she'd just done for them; to say how much it meant to him, personally, and that he _understood, _and that she had his gratitude. 

"I'm," she mumbled, clinging to him and clearing her voice and sniffling in deep. "I'm okay. I'm okay." 

"This is _radical!_" Jazz exclaimed, approaching Bee from behind as he flipped back out of vehicle mode. "My mechs we have a level playing field, fi-na-ly! Bee! Let's have race right now! You, me, and—uh. Is something wrong?"

"What's gotten into her?" Ironhide asked.

Mirage revved behind him and transformed, jumpy with excess energy, bristling with fresh kibble; now mostly red instead of blue, and bulked up to nearly three times his original weight.

Charlie squeezed Bumblebee tight, but took a deep breath and ducked her head and started pushing herself backwards, like she thought she had to compose herself. Bee buzzed softly at her and shook his head, holding her where she was. He kept her close and continued stroking her back, composing a calm, steady message to explain the situation—so that Charlie wouldn't have to:

[The vehicle which Charlie Watson donated to us is in excess of twenty years of age, which, as Ratchet explained to us on taking this hideaway, would ordinarily be sufficient time to fall into rust and disrepair, and be discarded. Restoring it to functional condition was a project originally shared between Charlie Watson and her patrilineal creator, who unexpectedly and prematurely ceased functioning. At this time, she was still a juvenile. She later completed the restoration alone, in memory of him, using the skills he had passed on to her.]

The joy crumbled out of Jazz's aura. When Bumblebee glanced back at him and the rest of their sorry gang, he'd saw any trace of a smile had fallen off the silver mech's face as well. Ratchet had his arms crossed and his optics shuttered and he was massaging his brow. 'Hide was taken aback. Mirage, if he felt anything, didn't show it on his faceplates or field.

Bumblebee glanced at all of them and then back down at Charlie Watson, who was bravely wiping away the last of her tears. [Are you satisfied she's with us, now?] 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title challenges you to wonder who it refers to, and whether the answer is or is not obvious.


	39. Doppelgänger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm. If that title made you wonder about holomatters, they will not be showing up in this continuity. Despite the cute things that have been done with them in other universes, they're a little too overpowered, and they'd sort of work counter to the whole 'let the alien cars be alien cars' theme we're exploring here in this here story.
> 
> Let's be honest though, we already know in IDW Bee's holomatter is female, if he had one in this universe it would just be a copy of Charlie. 
> 
> Wait, that's a funny train of thought to follow. What if he still had the holomatter for the Bayverse movies. What if we replaced Mikaela Barines/Megan Fox's character with Bee's lovingly faithful render of Charlie Watson. Sam Witwicky would be completely sexually confused and Bee would be completely oblivious, and Jazz would be whispering loudly in the background "Ratchet, don't you *dare* tell him" and then it awkwardly ends with Sam trying to make out with his extremely unimpressed car. Ahhhh, somebody take that plot bunny home, it deserves a loving parent.
> 
> Ahem! Okay, let's be serious here. Story.

They held a funeral that night, which to Charlie was unexpected. 

Not for her car, of course, but for the dead Decepticon they'd killed earlier in the week. 

The day she'd first met the group, they'd rushed off to deal with a number of Decepticons who'd apparently been stalking Ratchet ever since the attack; Decepticons who'd been peeved to discover there was more than just one or two badly injured Autobots in the area.

One of the Decepticons had been killed. At the time, Charlie hadn't thought much of it. The Decepticons were the bad guys, and Ratchet had badly needed replacement parts; the fact that Ironhide had carried the body back to them and broken it open for Ratchet's ease of use had seemed straightforward and sensible. It was just scrapping a dead robot car to fix a living one.

But after working for Ratchet for over a week, Charlie was starting to appreciate that the Decepticon had been a real person, and that it’s death might not even have been wholly intentional. After all: The war was over, the transformers appeared stranded on Earth, and their whole species was in a now-permanent reproduction crisis. Maybe killing one had been an avoidable accident—one the Autobots had shaken their heads at and made the best of.

Whatever their explanation, they'd taken the body out from under the awning by morning on the next day, and Charlie hadn't seen it all week. She found that they had buried it in a shallow grave, because they exhumed it now. Jazz started building up one of his ultra hot kiln fires that could melt plastic and soften metal. Bumblebee, Ironhide, and Mirage used improvised shovels to dig a deep burial trench.

Ratchet used his ambulance form to park himself beside the body, and then transformed there to inspect the remains. He extracted several more parts from it, likely with the intention of using them down the road should any of his companions become damaged. A few parts, he handed off to Jazz, who passed them through the kiln, presumably to irreparably destroy them. But then, when he was finished, Ratchet performed another sort of gesture: He ran his hand over its face plates, and gently shut its open optics.

It really hit home, then, that this was a _corpse_, and that Charlie should probably be as somber as she would be for a dead human. She suddenly became very concerned about whether they knew its name, but... she didn't know how to ask without sounding weird. 

No longer did it feel relevant to inquire _why _they were burying a Decepticon. They probably had a lot of reasons. In all honesty, they probably had to worry about the body being found and looted by _humans_. But the chief reason for anybody to bury anybody was out of respect for the loss of life, and that held true no matter whether this life form happened to look a lot like a car. You couldn't just leave a corpse laying around like that. It _deserved _better.

Charlie wasn't exactly invited to participate in the funeral, but she wasn't excluded either; so even though she had to duck under the smoke plume from Jazz's cancer fire, she got herself out next to Ratchet, and stuck close to him. He glanced her way with heavy lidded eyes and didn't say anything. He hadn't said anything to her since the Corvette was taken. She was privately grateful; she didn't really want to answer any questions about it.

When the grave was dug, the Autobots with working legs came up and stood around the body. They said a couple things over it: Ironhide muttered about young fools, and a few frustrated and disparaging remarks about Decepticons were aired. Then, as Charlie listened, they switched from English into the pronged croons and clicks of their own language.

Looking from bowed head to bowed head, Charlie had a _feeling—_though she didn't ask—that there was a ritual aspect to this, and that it involved some kind of prayer, and that _this_ was why they resorted to using a language they all agreed sounded comical in Earth's atmosphere, because they wanted to use old-fashioned and proper words for that prayer. At the end they switched to English again, and said a benediction Charlie didn't really understand:

_"Till All are One."_

Apparently they considered it universal enough that it could be rendered into any language and 'properly' understood.

They passed the body through the top of the kiln, likely to damage it so it wouldn't be desecrated any further down the line. Then they lowered it carefully down into the burial trench, and covered it with dirt, and rearranged some scrap on top of it to hide the freshly turned earth.

Bumblebee took first watch as guard for the night, because Mirage needed his rest, but as usual he took watch in car mode. Charlie passed out on his back seat, regardless, with his arm slung out protectively over her side, and his fingers gently stirring her hair. 

It had been a long day, and an equally long one was ahead of them.

* * *

One of the cool things Charlie had known Bumblebee could do was record events and project full color holograms of objects he'd seen. But what she hadn't realized at the time was that the location of the hologram projector roughly corresponded to his in-car console, and so could also be used to record and project the image of a driver.  
  
"EEAAAUUUGH!" she backpedaled in alarm after going to Bee's door and finding _herself_ already sitting in the front seat. A sort of patchy, see-through, bluish version, but herself nonetheless!  
  
The hologram dissolved and Bee busted out honking and playing several different stations worth of laughter.  
  
"Jesus, Bee...!" she kicked his wheel. "What was that!? Warn a girl!"  
  
"A way to blend at a glance," Ironhide answered her, rolling up beside them with a hologram of—Charlie was _disappointed_—a male human driver staring dispassionately out the windshield. "Mechanical schematics are not the only thing we can make use of while scanning a vehicle." As Charlie watched, the hologram twitched slightly. She realized it was a very short recording of the man, looping indefinitely over the same fifteen or twenty seconds. Like some kind of camera trick you'd see in a James Bond movie.  
  
Whelp, that gave her the start of an eye-spy list for the round south: Charlie would need to be on the lookout for hot female truck drivers. Surely they'd pass at least one?   
  
"It's a good thing you're riding with Bee, actually!" Jazz chirped, "Bee's hologram skills suuuuuuuuccckkk."  
  
Bee nonverbally asked Jazz if he wanted to have a go, right here, right now.  
  
"The projector is a better solution in daytime than at night," Ratchet lectured from above, turning what otherwise would have been utter humiliation at being strapped atop a flatbed into a classroom podium. "It is impossible to project without emitting at least some light. At night the glow is obvious to anyone who knows what they are looking for.  
  
"Well you could just pretend to be a senile old man who left his dome light running," Charlie teased.  
  
"Yeah! Except what's this 'pretend?' bit? Ohhhhhhhhh!" Jazz was on a roll this morning.  
  
"At night, the interior cabin darkness," Ratchet growled, "is typically more than enough to conceal the absence of a driver."  
  
"If nothing goes wrong," Dino interjected, "we'll be there before then."

Something occurred to Charlie suddenly. "Does Dino have—?" She looked to the gleaming red Corvette behind her and felt a pang of disorientation at the reminder it didn't belong to her anymore. "Do _you_ have a hologram?" she addressed him directly.

"He can pick one up on the road," Ratchet dismissed. 

Instead of answering her, Dino's hologram projector came online, producing an image of a track racer driver, whose arms were in the wrong position for holding the wheel. A bit of tilting and maneuvering around the hologram made it fit a bit better, but didn't explain why the guy was wearing a helmet, or sunken so far down in his seat. 

"Would it-?" Charlie hesitated, uncertain if she should continue talking, but then Bee was silent beside her, and Jazz hadn't interrupted to try and redirect her yet. "Would it help if I posed for you, to scan a hologram from, or something like that?"

Charlie immediately got the impression she'd said something awkward. It felt like every bot in the room held their collective breaths. Well, except Ratchet. Ratchet filled the silence by clearing his throat. Or, well, making the _sound _of clearing his throat. Charlie wasn't clear on whether his actual throat was presently available to be cleared. 

Then, wordlessly_, _the corvette's driver seat door popped open for her.

_Oh_.

Charlie hadn't expected Dino to invite her to _climb inside him,_ and, too late, wondered if her well-meaning offer had been some kind of imposition. She glanced back at Bee. Bee wiggled his doors and gave a little chirp and clicked a few times. _I guess give it a try, _he seemed to say. _I'm right here. _And Ratchet, who usually wasn't altogether quiet and tended to make a running commentary of snorts, laughs, groans, indignant noises, and so forth, made a little 'huh' noise, which seemed to indicate this was safe enough.

"Okay," Charlie looked back to the corvette, and then hesitantly moved to approach the seat. Dino didn't retract the invitation. "Alright then..." She ducked down and swung one leg in, and sat. The weirdest feeling of familiarity and detachment jittered through her.

She'd never expected to be in here again. This was her car. This was her upholstery. That was her rear view mirror, still angled so she could see perfectly out the rear windshield. Dino had gone from a chaotic mash of blue and red the night before to a uniform corvette red. Charlie wasn't sure whether that was a personal choice or whether he was bound to the rules of the hermit shell he'd taken on, at least until he was able to scan a blue car on the freeway. He looked, to a detail, perfect.

(Watching the corvette's distinctive features disappear when Dino picked an alternative camouflage was going to be hard.)

But no, this was _not _her car. This was Dino's car now, and she needed to be respectful, because every part of it was alive. "So," she said, placing her hands gently at eight and four o'clock upon the steering wheel. "How do we do this? Do I just sit back and stare intently out the windshield, then? Something like that?"

"That'll do it, lil mama," Jazz called out helpfully. "He only needs like half a minute, but you can't talk during it, so just hold...!"

Charlie did as she was instructed, relaxing as best she could.

Twenty seconds passed in semi-awkward silence. "That'll work!" Jazz was apparently Dino's mouthpiece for as long as he had a nasty human inside him.

"Cool! Um. Anything else? Would, like, turning in each direction help?" she asked, sitting a little forward like she would at a stop light, andpretending to turn the steering wheel each direction, hand over hand. She didn't want to _actually _move any part of Dino without his permission, and definitely not his tires.

"Yeah, that's actually real helpful at stoplights!" Jazz confirmed brightly. "Which is like, totally when people are closest to us, anyway."

"_Charlie,_" Bee called to remind her she was inside a semi-hostile racist, and that she should quit while she was ahead and let this be their one positive interaction. Charlie jumped and decided Bee was quite right, she needed to get out now. She glanced one last time in that rear view mirror, and then swung herself back out of the still-open door. Bee chirped and chattered until she back up beside _his_ driver's seat. Dino didn't comment, and definitely didn't thank her, but he didn't have to, because everyone else did, including Ratchet, Ironhide, and this casual gem from Jazz:

"Thanks babe!" Apparently, Charlie was a babe. That was a new experience. "Hey, hey, hey, you should do this same thing with Bee, except for with words!"

"What, say a whole bunch of things for him to repeat? So he can talk even more in _my voice _then he does already?" she laughed, leaning on Bee's door, halfway into climbing inside.

"Of course! Why not? Bee would totes make a pretty femme!" he joked, eliciting a groan from Ironhide and the sound of _'ding ding ding, round one, fight!'_ from Bee. "Hey!" Jazz suddenly gasped, twice as excited as before, as if he really had thought of something incredibly awesome: "Hey, there’s this thing—could you say it for Bee, right now? (Bee, be ready to record!) Charlie? Say: Autobots, roll out! Only really dramatic, okay? Like you're narrating for _Superman_ or something!"

"What?" Charlie grinned. "Why?"

"Just say it, little mama!" Jazz begged. "_Please?_" and he was gushing with so much enthusiasm, Charlie was almost sure she had to be getting pranked or something. But as she looked around, she was again stricken by how silent everyone was, all waiting for her. Even Ratchet seemed to be leaning forward as if in expectation of something.

"Okay, um." Charlie puffed herself up, and raised her voice, and put her all into it: "Autobots? _Roll out!_"

"WOO!" Jazz's wheels squealed, Dino's engine revved, Ratchet hummed in satisfaction, and Ironhide honked loudly. "That's what I'm talking about! Bee, Dino! Let's ride!"

Jazz flew forward, and Dino zoomed after him. Bee fidgeted and musically urged her to get inside, and, once she did, he slammed the door and bolted along third in line, his speakers pumping, and sweet blues music and guitar solos streaming out his windows: 

_ Let the good times roll!  
Let the good times roll!  
I don't care if you're young or old! _

_Get together, let the good times roll!_

_No matter whether rainy weather,_  
_Birds of a feather gotta stick together.  
So get yourself under control,  
Go out and get together and let the good times roll!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Charlie cannot know the honor she has just been given, to be not just the voice of their mute Lieutenant, but the voice of their absent Prime.
> 
> ["Let the Good Times Roll"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYB5vLzEHvI) By BB King.
> 
> Yes. Yes I missed the chance to use "Let the Good Times Roll" by a band literally called [The Cars.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki6xHnDAwHw) But don't worry, I guarantee you that's what Bee played _immediately _afterwards, so we're still good.


	40. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's July! I'm sliding into a couple months of my life where I might be doing some big adjustments and writing time might be limited, but-- for now! Thank you my supporters:
> 
> Thank you CMY, Bloodette, TheWonderfulShoe, Charbee Fangirl and Incrediblectopus!
> 
> Thank you Fowo, Totalitaylorism, AristaStarfyr, and Artastrophe!

It was a trippy experience looking in the rear view mirror and seeing yourself in the car behind you. 

Not only was Charlie's corvette back there, but Charlie herself was driving it. Dino/Mirage's hologram skills were much better than Bumblebee's and there was none of that splotchy blue glow that would have given the projection away. Even more eerie was the way Hologram-Charlie stared unfailingly ahead, unseeing eyes locked on some nonexistent target that might just as well have been Real-Charlie.

It felt like looking back into the past. Into another life. Something left behind.

It also felt _juuuuust _a bit like being chased by an alien body-snatcher.

She wouldn't be telling Dino that one.

Bumblebee's irritated grumbling brought her attention back to their radio console, where numbers on a small digital display rapidly flew up and down: There weren't many radio stations out here, in the back-ass-of-nowhere, and none of them were playing the kind of rock she or Bee liked. He'd scrubbed up and down six times already, and found nothing but Dixie, country, bluegrass, and more Dixie.

Every time, he inevitably gave up, slapped together a DJ voice for himself using clips from different radio hosts, and played songs he'd stored in that brilliant mechanical brain of his. Charlie didn't ask what kind of technology could make that possible; the boy was capable of recording _holograms _for Pete's sake, surely _human music_ wasn't an issue for him.

With rock streaming out the mustang speakers, and the sun warm overhead and the road open and welcoming before them, the two of them had a bit of a music party. Good beats had her drumming on the steering wheel, and Bumblebee kept up a running commentary with whistles of agreement. She sang along to the good songs, and rolled her eyes at some of the others. She and Bee tended to favor different genres of rock.

Then came the seventh lull in their tunes, where Bee scrubbed all possible stations again, looking for anything he might find tolerable.

"Dolly Parton's not bad," Charlie allowed amid his irritable buzzing. "Hey. Go back a station. Yeah. Give that one a try."

_Tumble outta bed  
_ _And I stumble to the kitchen  
Pour myself a cup of ambition  
_

Bee wasn't sure. He was still skeptical.

_Jump in the shower _  
_And the blood starts pumpin' _  
_Out on the street _  
_The traffic starts jumpin' _  
_The folks like me on the job from 9 to 5!_  
  
A yellow car wiggled his tires gently from side to side, enough to suggest a swaying or dancing motion without flinging her all over his cab. Charlie laughed. "Man," she sagged back in her seat and pat an armrest. She glanced at the clock. "Road trips are better with friends. Although, I don't think I got bored a single time all the way coming out here; too anxious." Belated, she remembered she was supposed to be playing eye-spy for female truckers. Right! Not that they'd passed anyone.

Bee whined.

"What? No! I'm not bored-bored!" Charlie hastily clarified. "Bee, how could I possibly be bored with you, that's not what I meant. You're the one who agrees road trips are better with music!"

Bee grumbled in a way that suggested _everything_ was better with music; and Charlie felt vindicated she'd interpreted him correctly when Jazz beeped from somewhere behind them. Clearly Bee had actually 'said' something out loud via short range transmission, so,

"I agree," she agreed. 

"Eep? Vrrrm!" Bee was all happy and smug; he'd been understood without words; they were getting better at this.

"Everything would be _so _much easier if we could just _talk _to each other," she complained. "I could ask you a thousand questions."

Bee growled; he agreed; muteness sucked.

"Yeah, I'll _bet _you've been pissed about the 'can't talk' thing longer than I have," she grinned. But then a thought occurred to her, and she leaned forward and patted his dash. "Hey, let's play a game."

"Uuoo?"

"Let's_ try_ and talk to each other," Charlie conspired, and then quickly insisted when he whined unhappily at her: "I'm serious! Look, you and me, we're both capable people, we're smart. How hard can it be? You've got the radio and sound clippings, and I can... I can play twenty questions, help you narrow down things when you don't have the word. _C'mon _Bee. Let's _talk. _Let's work out how to communicate, let's get around this thing."

"UuuooOOOOooooo..."

"Why do you sound sad?" she exclaimed. "Bee! C'mon! Puff yourself up, you can do this. _We_ can do this."

He snorted, but seemed to do so, and quieted down the music volume so he could play an enthusiastic pep rally: "_Yes we can!_" 

"That's the spirit!" Charlie hi-fived... er, well, the overhead vanity mirror. "Okay, first question. Uh. So. Ooh! Test question: Do you like Rick Astley?"  
  
Bumblebee swerved abruptly into the right lane and sent Charlie flying over the arm rest. "Bee!" she laughed. "Bee, c'mon! I knew you were gonna say 'no,' you could have just used the windshield wipers or something!"

_Damn straight it was a no,_ Bee grumbled.

Charlie flicked his dash with the back of her hand. "I guess I should ask serious stuff I've been wondering about. How about this? The war. This is something I've been wondering about. Ironhide mentioned you destroyed the vector something or another link, and that was kind the end of the war. But did it have, like, an _official _end, or... or how did that exactly go?"

Bee took a moment to composite his answer. "_Megatron," _he said in a low commanding voice that could give a person goosebumps, "—was killed in action by—(beep beep). Autobots—who also crashed his veh—_Flagship, the—_"

"Megatron, that was...?" Charlie tried to place the name when for three years she'd been ignoring all news about this.

"_Leader of the Decepticons,_" Bumblebee answered, without judgement.

"The bad guys."

Bumblebee chirped in confirmation.

"So, like, was there some kind of treaty? I don't know much about wars, but I'd like to know the jist of all the parts involved here. Like, how you know it's 'over' even though you guys just _killed_ a Decepticon a week ago?"

By the sounds Bee was making, he was really struggling to answer her on this one. 

Charlie tried to simplify her question: "Is the war _really _over just cause the leader of a... a... _man_, I don't even know what kind of war you just had. Was he the leader of a different country than yours, or—? Crap, I'm making this unnecessarily complicated. Um. Okay! Didn't he have a second in command or somebody who could take over, fight the good fight, with him gone?"

"Bzzzt—_sort of—_hsst—_yes __but no_."

"No?"

"_Megatron_—was—_the Deceptions._"

"Huh." Charlie thought about that, and tried to make sense of it. She recalled to mind Ratchet's explanation of how _old _he was, and that the amount of change he went through in a lifetime was similar to whole evolutionary eras on earth. These robots were made to _last. _Maybe that meant there were comparatively fewer over them, and that one bot's death really could mean the end of an age. 

Bee chirruped smugly.

"Yeah," Charlie agreed, "see? We're doing _great _so far. Told you we would figure it out! So, this war: Did Megatron's officers—or whatever—did they sign some kind of treaty with you, officially ending the war?"

Bee thought about it. "No—zzt. _Optimus Prime_—signed into law today—_an agreement_—zzt, vvv—with the—_humans._"

"Which humans? The President?"

Bumblebee hummed, sounding as if he was trying to remember an exact name. "Vvv—The United Nations."

"The United Nations," Charlie sat back, chewing the inside of her cheek. "I don't get it; that's exactly what you should of done, as far as I know, and the treaty should actually be worth something. That's how we _do _international stuff, anymore. I mean, I'm just a layman, but the UN tries to prevent wars, and there's _no way _anybody got every single country of it to agree to betray you guys, without somebody leaking. We suck at keeping secrets, we seriously do; and, anyway, countries with bad militaries would pitch a fit if they knew anybody was provoking the scary giant alien robots into another world war."

History had never been Charlie's favorite subject in school—she'd never been particularly keen on _books—_but listening to national public radio in the car or at the shop with her Dad had been a bonding thing for years. 

"So..." she tried to work through the mystery this posed: "Did just _our_ government betray you, is this an America-being-a-douche-thing?" She scratched at her head. "I mean not that we've not done that in the past, but, again, we're bad at secrets. Bay of Pigs, Watergate, most recently the Iran-Contra scandal... One political party or another would oppose it _just because_. Do you guys know who exactly is after you, or why?"

"Zzt—they call themselves—_Cemetery—_Mnnnnnn—Wind front heading in a northerly—(embarrassed noises)—Wind-wind-wind; _Cemetery—_Wind."

"Where did they come from? The news was reporting it like we'd sent in the Navy Seals after a Decepticon."

"Sst-Unsure. Hss—Very well funded."

"Then is this like an FBI-shot-Kennedy thing, is some sub-group of the government doing it in secret?" Charlie crossed her arms. "Someone in politics is being a _sneaky racist bastard, _and I wonder how far up it goes. I hope whoever's involved is getting exposed as we speak. I hoped they get dragged through the _mud. _This isn't how all humans think."

"I know—Charlie."

She smiled and patted the steering wheel. "We can be kinda shitty though," she admitted. "Humans. We manage to do a lot of dumb stuff in the name of dumb causes like nationalism. Or, I guess, planetism in this case."

Bumblebee cooed soothingly. Then he said, "We've been at war for—zzt—approximately—zzt—_one-four-zero, zero, zero_—earth—zzzt—years."

"One-four... fourteen... fourteen thou-?" Charlie's eyes widened, "You've been at war for _fourteen thousand years_?!"

Bumblebee chirped!

"Oh." Charlie was quiet. "Humans had a World War kinda recently, before you all got here, and it devastated countries on multiple continents, and that was only like _six_ years."

Bumblebee cooed sympathetically. 

Wow. "And Megatron... He's been the leader of the Decepticons for all that time?"

_"Affirmative!"_

Well now Charlie had some perspective for how a war could be declared 'over' by only one side when the leader of the opposition was finally dead. "It, uh," Charlie swallowed, "it was an important war, though. Our World War? There was a political party in charge of another country that had gone nuts and was wiping out whole groups of people and working them to death and experimenting on them and worse."

Bumblebee warbled even _more_ sympathetically. 

"I'm guessing your war was probably super important, too. Even though the ending sucked."

"Uuuuoouuu..."

A somber note lingered in the air for the next minute or so, as Charlie and Bumblebee thought through a few things. No music played. Charlie was thinking about her dad, and Nazis, and wondering which American politicians were secretly responsible for attacking Ratchet. You had to be a special form of slimy to go after your ally's _doctors._

Autobots had fought _alongside _the military, with the navy, with the air force. How could those same people who'd gone into battle alongside them, and been interdependent upon them, turn around and try to wipe them out? Charlie had heard news pundits argue there was no difference between Autobots and Decepticons, and they were all 'invaders,' but she wasn't sure how widespread that kind of willful delusion was. One group had been trying to wipe them out, and the other hand't, and just cause there'd been a lot of property damage in the middle didn’t make them the same. 

Charlie wanted to ask this 'Cemetery Wind' a few questions. 

But she couldn't, so instead she found herself in the unusual position of _rooting for Russia_. Well, not Russia specifically, but _all the other countries, _because if one thing was for sure, it was that Earth's countries did not get along, and if anybody broke a peace treaty, everyone else was going to home in on that mistake like a shark smelling blood. All any other country had to do was say 'Hey Autobots, did the Navy Seals really scrap your medic? Well, you know, we could help you get the Americans back for that,' and the entire worldwide balance of power would be thrown for a spin. Nobody wanted that to happen. Fear of it might be able to scare a few people straight or get them dragged out for a public shaming. 

Not that Charlie wanted her home to been up on the wrong side of history, but maybe the moral of this whole story was: Everyone needs an enemy to keep them honest.

Sigh.

Well, the good thing about this conversation was now Charlie felt _informed. _She had a name to put on Cemetery Wind. She knew who the Autobots had been signing treaties with. She had a bare minimum understanding of the peices involved. And one thing was clear: For now, the Autobots couldn't rely on humans to fix their own mistake. They had to take care of Ratchet, find any other victims or potential targets, and send out a planet-wide message that 'the humans' were behaving cagey, and not to trust them.

"Oh! Hey." Trying to decide which of her elected officials might be in on a project this _ungrateful _had Charlie wondering about the robot 'officials,' too. "About Optimus Prime. He's your leader, right? The leader of the Autobots?"

Bee chirped!

"What's he _like_?" she asked. "Do you like him? Do you _trust_ him?"

Bee lost - his - little - yellow - _mind. _He went bonkers, trilling and flashing his lights, playing trumpets and applause. "Faster than a speeding bullet!" Bee cheered, "More powerful than a locomotive! Look, up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?"

"Oh you think he's _Superman, _do you?" Charlie laughed.

_"He's the greatest, he's fantastic!  
Wherever there is danger he'll be there!  
He's the ace, he's amazing!  
He's the strongest,  
He's the quickest,  
_ _He's the best!"_

"Bee, that's the _Danger Mouse _song!" she chided as if he were being ridiculous.

"_He's a flash, he's a marvel, he's a masterpiece of circuitry,  
__He's the best, he's the greatest—"_

Charlie kept laughing, because apparently Optimus Prime was some kind of personal hero for Bumblebee, and honestly if that wasn't high praise, nothing was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I just got this crazy idea! What if one day you guys ended up having a cartoon of your own, just like Danger Mouse? Eh? Eh? Any takers!?
> 
> Songs Used:
> 
> [ 9 to 5 ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbxUSsFXYo4) by Dolly Parton  
[ Original Superman Introduction, 1954](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvUbbDUhJNg)  
[ Danger Mouse Themesong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAXmNUDAWv4)  
I don't have a link to the Romie-0/Julie-8 song, but the whole made-for TV special is basically available online, for example: [ here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ19n-e8YAA)


	41. Vroom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know *full damn well* that it's hard to keep track of what's happening in stories that have a month between updates, but I'm still in a stressful transitory period o' life where updates will be slow for a bit. So! We pick up headin' south with the bots, still on a road trip, still enjoying the pre-internet era when the speed limits had just been upped from a national limit of 55, and gas stations didn't yet have full breakfast buffets. 
> 
> I'm wishing a wonderful August to my dedicated supporters, and also to all you beautiful lovely readers who stop in with your gorgeous comments. Keep safe out there.

'Dino' was not impressed with the human bladder. Not if his angry revving from the passing lane was to be believed. But Charlie? Charlie had never even _entertained _the idea of trying to hold it. 

The first three hours of the road trip had passed easily enough, and Charlie and Bee had spent most of the time talking or enjoying music. Their caravan had gone from winding country roads, to a weedy highway, and then had finally hit a proper interstate: South on rural I-85, where the rural sixty-five mile per hour speed limits had them making great time. South Carolina was wedge shaped, with the fat end towards the ocean and the pointy bit inward; and that's where _they_ were, with the mile markers counting down rapidly towards zero. 'Welcome to Georgia' said the signs. 'State Visitor Center, 1 mile.'

And ordinarily, yeah, that'd be the ideal place to stop on a road trip, right? But visitor centers were mostly for _tourists, _useful for their bathrooms, brochures, vending machines, and souvenirs shop. If Charlie was going to be selfish about this, then she wasn't just going to feed _herself. _So they passed the center by, and only then did Charlie ask Bee to please notify the group their human would need to tinkle sometime in the next hour. All she had to do was pick the right place for the pit stop, some time before eleven, and McDonalds would still have Egg McMuffins and hot cups of joe.

She kept her eyes on the blue info signs on the verge. At least one exit led to the middle of absolutely nowhere.

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. There!_ Gas?_ Finally, and multiple options, so it'd probably be cheap! What about restaurants? Waffle House? Delicious-sounding, but no drive-through. Bennigan's? She'd never heard of it, but the style of sign made her think of a sit-down restaurant. Bojangles'? The logo didn't scream 'breakfast.' Bob's Big Boys? Ooh, might work. It'd have breakfast, but would it have a drive-thru? They didn't all have the same layout.

Bumblebee shifted from FM to AM radio stations for a pause, and Charlie glanced to the console just as he settled on traffic radio. Heh! Apparently the scout was scouting out conditions ahead on the highway, making sure there were no blockages and that they wouldn't end up trapped and claustrophobic in stop-and-go traffic. 

For a moment, Charlie felt endeared watching an alien relying on mundane human things to find their way around. Then she thought to herself: He's probably done this before, on another planet, with other aliens. Multiple times, even. How many planets could a person get to in fourteen thousand years? How many alien traffic jams had Jazz nearly died of boredom in? Were humans the only species that had ever made Dino jumpy, or were there equally offensive green, people, and blue people out there he'd also despised?It was difficult to grasp the sheer time scale her robots were used to working with. What did a person _do _with all that time?

They passed the exit by. The traffic report washed over them. Some congestion, a minor accident.

Did other forms of life tend to be _small,_ the way humans were? Were the robots, as a species, used to posturing as other people's passenger vehicles and machinery as a means of infiltration? Transformers seemed to be some kind of _natural chameleon. _What, if anything, were they originally mimicking on their home world? And why? That sounded like a difficult question for Bumblebee to answer. Ironhide appeared to be the family storyteller.

Bumblebee abruptly rolled his volume dial to silent, and Charlie blinked at the console. He stayed very quiet a long moment, and she had the impression was listening for something, but what? Bad guys? Decepticons? Dino threatening to ram the rear bumper?

_Why don't I just ask him? C'mon Charlie. Don't spend so much time inside your own head. You've got friends now. Talk._

But maybe Charlie was a little out of practice talking, and fatigued by having done so well already at it, because she didn't say anything. A large green road sign coming up on the berm said: _Atlanta Dragway. _And, naively, Charlie imagined that was a good omen.

* * *

The whole neighborhood must have been built around the Dragway, with an associated business model, because when they came off the freeway they found the place well-developed but essentially deserted. The exit must have drawn big crowds on weekends to justify all this infrastructure.

Nobody sat with them at the bottom of the off ramp, and when Ironhide unexpectedly pulled into a different turning lane, Charlie was disappointed but not surprised. There weren't crowds to blend into now, and the five of them shouldn't be seen so obviously traveling together.

"Crap." Charlie rolled down Bumblebee's window down and leaned out. "I was going to get everyone gas. How's Cranky Grandpa holding up?"

Jazz snickered in the back; Ratchet coughed in irritation; Ironhide let down her window to imitate what a driver would do to hear her better. 

"He's fine," Ironhide growled softly. "Take ya up on that offer later; gas stations got cameras."

"And attendants," Charlie agreed sadly. A chick paying for a gaggle of her girlfriends, all in pony cars and out in the middle of nowhere, played to a well developed stereotype; a truck towing a delivery van needed a completely different cover story. She couldn't hide paying for Ironhide under the hustle and bustle of a busy gas station. It was best the trickle circled around and they reconvened on the highway somewhere.

Charlie gave a thumbs up to show she understood. Then the light overhead went green and Bee surprised her by lurching forward with a heavy foot. "Whoa." Was he excited about the Dragway, maybe? She cocked her head towards the open window.

Oh, yup: Now that they were off the freeway, even Charlie could hear powerful car doing practice runs out a short distance west. It couldn't have been a race day, right? But that didn't stop Bumblebee from quivering with excitement. His handling was loose and fluid, and he almost jerked his wheel out of her hands when she steered him into a left hand turning lane so they could cross the divided median.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Charlie called in surprise, patting him. "What's up?"

Bumblebee played a gush of garbled songs and sound clips. Charlie tired to make sense of them:

"You wish we could go watch a race?"

He bleated even more anxiously garbled sound bites!

"You wish you could go _participate_ in a race?"

He gave a little keen, which petered off to some very sad silence as he slumped forward on his shocks.

Oh, suddenly Charlie felt _really _bad. She didn't mind Mirage/Dino's engine snarling violently behind them, but a glance in the rear view mirror showed her Jazz was wiggling his wheels back and forward like a child with ants in their pants. Charlie had clearly made a mild tactical error, and no wonder the adults had split on her: She'd just paraded a bunch of kindergartners right in front of a bouncy house.

(Ah, the metaphors one came up with after working at a beach-side carnival way, way, way too long.)

"Oh boy," Charlie cleared her throat as they waited for the left arrow. "Well, Bee... If makes you feel any better, the Atlanta NHRA race was last month. So you're not missing anything exciting. Probably just warm ups—and drag tracks are usually just a quarter mile long and completely straight." 

Bee perked up a bit, and then gave a curious whistle.

"Why do I know that?" Charlie smirked. "Because Lori Johns placed first in the Top Fuel Dragster event."

_"Who's that?"_

"A _girl,_ Bee," Charlie laughed. "Like just a little older than me, too! Racing's usually a men's sport, and Top Fuel dragsters are the fastest and most dangerous track racers in the world, even more souped up then Mirage was. She's one of the only girls out there."

Bee seemed temporarily confused about that, and had to pick out his words one at a time. "Human—girls—don't—_race?"_

"Well..." The traffic light changed, and Charlie released the break and turned the wheel. "Hold that thought, I'll explain when we're back on the road. 

* * *

The aptly branded Racetrac gas station looked like it had as sizable convenience store, and the 'cash only' signs explained away why the head of a rich girl clique wouldn't be waving around daddy's credit cards. Bumblebee slipped straight up to the pump like a dog to his bowl; Charlie didn't even have to drive. 

"No diesel this time, it'll look weird," she warned him this time as she got out of the car. "And engine off." 

The other two Autobots were slowly closing around her. Mirage looked reluctant to take a pump, but Jazz zipped right up opposite to Bumblebee—and then once more scared the shit out of her with a hologram by _hanging out his own window. _

"Hey, hey, hey!" the hologram called to her—or mouthed perfectly in time with Jazz doing an extremely convincing falsetto. _Was_ that a falsetto? Had he just upped the pitch on his own voice, just like that? "Babe, c'mere!" And the hologram waved to her, so, well, Charlie hurried over next to... uh... to him? Her? It?

Jazz's driver hologram appeared to be an overly excited petite Asian girl in a silver tuxedo with pin straight dark blue hair in a bowl cut, which, when added in how 'she' spoke and acted stereotypically Black, somehow went straight past 'strange,' and looped all the way back to make perfect sense again. Unlike everyone else, Jazz appeared capable of animating the entire hologram as if it was alive, because it was looking right at Charlie, beaming, and gesticulating.

"There ya are, Lil Mama, how's the ride been, yo? Smooth as butter? Whoa—Hey now!" He/she batted at Charlie as Charlie passed fingers straight through him/her. (Yup, not solid, it really was just a hologram.) "Don't be rude, gurl, stickin' yo fingers in people; d'yo mother teach ya no manners? Listen: D'ya think ya can get me some of them Lil' Debbie Swiss Rolls?"

Charlie blinked rapidly. "I'm sorry, what?"

_"Swiss Rolls," _Jazz repeated with a winning smile. "Only don't tell Ratchet none."

"Are... are you going to _eat _them?" Charlie asked, skeptically.

"_Rmmm_, Jazzie's got a weak spot for cocoa," he/she purred. 

Cocoa? Vehicles couldn't eat cocoa. Hell, Ratchet had warned her about _coal. _"Won't sugar—or any solid food, for that matter—gum up your engine?"

"Naw, pssh, babe, I got a special filter and neutralizers fah that sorta thing: Toxins, acids, base, resins—"

"You have special equipment designed to avoid _being poisoned,_ and you want to use it to eat tiny organic chocolate cakes?"

"Yes!" she/he agreed, holographic and ethnically unlikely blue eyes gleaming. "Sides, it's wayyyy better than me asking for a pack of ciggys, ain't it?"

What! Charlie threw up her arms. Where was a wrench when you needed it? For a moment she couldn't speak. She put her hands on her hips. Then she asked: "It-it doesn't work like that, right? Nicotine? What-what would you _possibly_ get out of smoking a cigarette? "

"_The_ _placebo effect_," Jazz hummed.

"You want to smoke a stick of basically nothing, sized far too small for you to even hold normally, just so you can pretend you're smoking whatever kind of drug would actually get a robot buzzed?"

"Well, bein' honest: Lookin' more for a softener than a sharpener, but mnhmm, you got it!"

"Are... are you going to go through a pack a day?"

"Heh, no worries, babe, no thang, I make em last when I find em. S'just—" another drag racer gunned it in the distance, and both Jazz and his hologram perked up like a dog that had just seen a squirrel— "... t'have somethin' ta fiddle with mah hands on a bad day, ya dig?"

Charlie had had enough revelations in the last fifteen seconds and instead looked up to see what the pump numbers were for this gaggle of misfits. Assuming Dino ever finally got around to accepting his free breakfast, which two infinitely preferable Autobots were missing out on, she figured he'd grab pump two.

"Oh, but hey!" Jazz's hologram leaned over the passenger's seat after her, "But them cakes, yo!"

* * *

The primary things anyone ever wanted from a gas station were lottery tickets, cigarettes, and Coca Cola. Their milk tasted funny, their sandwiches were deplorable, and even though they had bathrooms, they were never, ever clean. Case in point: No toilet paper, no soap, stained tiles and seats, and a grimy frosted window shuddered every time cars vroomed in the distance.

While squatting to avoid touching anything, Charlie mused that if fast food restaurants or convenience stores ever teamed up with gas stations, they'd probably make a killing: One stop shopping for everything you forgot to or from work, all while performing another errand. Of course, that would gas station execs to learn about hygiene standards. Ugh. _All Employees Must Wash Hands_, _my aft._

Once she'd finished business and returned the bathroom key, Charlie of course saw the food selection was awful. Ratchet, if he were here, would surely agree the candy aisle wasn't designed to support human nutritional needs for more than an afternoon, which meant the nearby McDonald's drive thru would soon feature and angry Dino/Mirage growling about human stomachs instead of bladders. 

But Charlie did see a box of Swiss Rolls, so she grabbed them. Then, after hesitating, she grabbed some Reese Cups. Kit-Kats. Sour gummy worms. Spicy beef jerky. Juicy Fruit Bubblegum. What other pointless fifty cent flavors would delight the silliest person on the team? He'd said he liked cocoa, specifically. Okay then: Dark Chocolate Hershey Kisses, since they had them. Why not? It wasn’t like her cover story was presently fit for buying much motor oil. She took one out prematurely and popped it into her mouth. _Mn. _Jazz was right, chocolate right now was a good idea.

She was walking up to the counter when a rotating display for sunglasses caught her eye. The opposite sides had been showing off Aviators and Wayfarers, which of course still went entirely ignored: Charlie headed straight for the smooth curving visor of some shamelessly futuristic robot glasses. 

They would have looked cheesy on literally anyone. _Anyone._ Anyone but the one person God had clearly put them on this Earth for.

"Pack of Marlboros, please," she called to the attendant as she approached the counter and dug in her pockets for a couple of twenties. Brand recognition; Uncle Hank smoked. "And I'm paying for the girls on pumps—" Dino's engine snarled somewhere outside and she glanced to see him passing the station door like some kind of circling predator, "—one, thee, and _two _please, assuming _'Tina' _out there can get over herself."

* * *

So much for highly-trained, zillion-year-old, military-grade, infiltrator aliens.

Charlie exited the Racetrac to find all three of them squabbling like children. _Loudly._ All three of them paused just long enough to quiver and stutter at the sound of another set of race cars flying by in the distance. Then they resumed:

'Tina' was hissing about time and liabilities. Bumblebee sounded like he was performing an interrogation but had forgotten he didn't need to beep and twitter out loud to do so. 'Jazzie' was at least using his/her hologram to complain at both of them, though the fact that he/she was replying to an empty car and an unmoving hologram didn't necessarily make the situation less damning. 

Charlie rolled her eyes and stalked back to them. Thank God gas station cameras lacked audio feeds. 

"Look, Bee, Ah didn't ask fah any—! Hey! Hey, hey she's back already, so leave off it Dino, she—_Oooh~! _Babe! What'd ya get me, that's not just cakes!"

Charlie grabbed the Porsche's passenger door and planted the plastic goodie bag on the seat. Jazz quietly squealed, hologram leaning over it as if that would help him see any better. Charlie still grabbed out the glasses and 'showed' them to him. Her. It.

"Put these on," Charlie demanded.

Faint blue lines were already appearing around the hologram's eyes, copying the design. "Yes Ma'am," he enthused; "right away Ma'am!"

She threw the Porsche door gently shut, walked around the car, and yelled, "And pop the fuel door release!"

"_Ooh,_ yeah, baby~!" Jazz crooned, "You know just how ta treat me right; you _click_ that nozzle in mah pipe!"

Charlie twisted around in surprise, nearly overbalancing in her confusion because, _whoa_, she hadn't been on that specific side of an innuendo before, and definitely not coming from a guy. She didn't have to wonder if she'd heard correctly: Dino started shouting something in Robot-ese and Bumblebee started playing a fairly Satanic sounding metal band hysterically screaming 'KILL KILL KILL!' as he bent and twisted in place.

Memories of the mudfighting flashed in front of her eyes. Charlie spun around and threw out her arms to protect the Porsche, shouting, "Guys, not in _PUBLIC!_" Transforming, fighting, nix!

Bee squeaked and deflated back into a car. Jazz (and his newly visored hologram) perked up from trying unsuccessfully to duck in place. Mirage stopped speaking in robot.

Charlie glared around to make sure no humans had seen any of this. Then she turned to glare at everybot she could include in a single glare—not quite Mirage/Dino(/Tina), though he certainly deserved it.

"Everybody _eat your gas_," she told them sternly, and dammit Jazz better have been joking about gas nozzles being sexual, because otherwise she'd wasted twenty dollars on gas Mirage would absolutely not be eating, and each pony car only had a twenty gallon tank to begin with. "We need to feed you all, get some food for my damn self, and then we're _going to the race track, _because apparently the three of you need to watch some long pointy cars go _vroom _once or twice."

Mirage tried to growl something, just then, maybe about human_ brains_ instead of just their stomachs and bladders; but suddenly two Top Fuel Dragsters went vroom in the background again, and all three of them stood up on their tires like they'd gotten goosebumps, and were silent. 

Somewhere, somehow, Charlie suspected Ratchet was snickering to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come to think of it, [Mirage](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mirage_\(G1\)) is technically a nobleman, just stuck in Michael Bay's unnecessarily bad recharacterizations and generic renaming, forced to talk like an Italian Mobster because apparently all the robots downloaded accents, sure, let's roll with that; but hey, if none of that were true, he'd make a much better ['Tina'](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Tina_Lark) than he does a ['Dino!'](https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Mirage_\(Movie\))
> 
> The 'Kill Kill Kill' song was from a band literally called 'Scraping Foetus off the Wheel,' on their album 'Hole' and the song is [ White Knuckles ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_fto7jiak8) and it sounds basically how Charlie described it!


	42. Migration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! I moved! I went to a new country ARGLEFARGLEGARGLE!
> 
> October Shoutouts to all my beautiful supporters:  
Charbee fangirl, Fowo, Bloodette, Totalitaylorism, TheWonderful Shoe, Incrediblectopus, AristaStarfyr, CMY, Artastrophe, and Adoriblebeast...
> 
> .... And introducing the newest member of the gang: MsTrickyNici! Thank you so very much!

Charlie could not find even _one gosh darn sign_ pointing out the route to the Atlanta Dragway.

That seemed a bit of an oversight for a town that clearly depended on weekend races to bring in tourists, but Charlie had proven herself preeeeeetty damn good at finding cars in the middle of the rural countryside, and the strip couldn't be _that _far away if they'd heard it from the gas station. So rather than stop again to ask for directions, she picked a road at random and pointed their nose west.

A quarter mile down winding East Ridge Road, and wala: They'd found it. Easy.

The sign_—Atalanta Dragway—_was of a decent size, but it could hardly be called eye-catching, sharing space as it was with all its sponsors. The driveway was long and straight, heading far back out onto the property where stood a big billboard-covered building. The land had no big fancy wall, or even a ticket both or toll gate; the only deterrence to entry was a knee-high set of barrier gate arms, one side of which had been left ajar by whatever team was presently out there doing practice runs.

On a race day there would have been volunteers, tents, food trucks, and music; without them the place looked and felt as desolate as a theme park after closing hour...

Was it trespassing if the door was clearly left open? Pssh, she'd come too far to give up now! Charlie turned the steering wheel, and together they purred down the lane, Jazz hot on their heels and Mirage following in the rear. Hopefully if anyone saw them, the last thing on their mind would be the possibility of transforming robots. 

* * *

Racing vehicles were typically fed onto the dragway through a tunnel on the lowest level of the main building. Peeking through as they passed, Charlie could see a set of low profile drag racers being fussed over by a casually dressed pit crew.

Bingo! Still, behind the cars was a terrible location from which to spectate a race, so Charlie spun the wheel and swung them around the main building. She found service paths for trucks and clean up crew, and a large gap between the starting gate and the nearest grandstands. This was going to be the ideal location to spy from. If they'd noticed they were being watched, the pit crew didn't seem to care.

Bumblebee thrummed, his radio turned down low and whispering back and forth across AM stations at an unintelligible volume. Charlie cut the wheel, slowed, and braked to a stop. 

"We're not here _to _race," Charlie reminded him. "Just to watch a practice drive or two, and then it's straight back to the freeway. Ratch and Ironhide are waiting for us."

Bumblebee threw himself into park to show he understood. No showing off. No racing. (No diving off of any cliffs.) 

"Front row seats!" Jazz stage-whispered as he spun his wheel hard and skid to a halt facing them. Mirage puttered quietly in behind them, acting nervous, distracted, and easily spooked. "This all for them to be doin' tune-ups n' adjustments between races?"

"That or they're training a new driver. Mind if I step out?" Bee gave her the go ahead with a little chirp, so she popped open the driver's side door and slid around her beautiful yellow mustang to get a better look at the strip. She crossed her arms. She glanced behind herself to make sure he was okay with it, and leaned against the passenger side door. Bee didn't mind. Bee, apparently, was already 100% fixated on the thrumming drag racers.

There was a shout from the pit crew, and one of them hurried over to man the 'Christmas tree,' aka, starting lights.

Red, yellow, yellow, yellow, GREEN: _Vroom_, the two dragster rocketed forwards straight and true like they had jet engines grafted to their afts, and all around her alien robots stood up tall, tense, and excited upon their wheels. 

"Fwwwwww_wwwwwe_-wyeuu!" Jazz whistled, louder than he probably should have. It was difficult to tell whether he was merely admiring the zero to sixty or actually cat-calling at inanimate machines.

Possibly, it was both.

Charlie shook her head and grinned, glad to be there with them.

* * *

"Been a couple minutes." Ironhide mused.

Ratchet scoffed.

"Titch longer than speedster fill-ups usually take."

Ratchet didn't even reply.

"Could be lookin' for us, with comms silent. Might have seen some suspicious activity."

"Ironhide," Ratchet drawled irritably, and he'd be pinching a brow to alleviate a processor ache if he'd been in root mode, "you know _exactly _where they are."

Ironhide harummed in admission. She did know. It was obvious.

Ratchet didn't say anything after that. He was making the most of their break from the high speed vibrations of the freeway. The fixed suspension system had probably taken a big load off his systems, but he was still running off a ruptured fuel synthesis, low intake, and highly prioritized auto-repair. 

"So," Ironhide prompted after a long and comfortable silence, "we gonna rescue her?"

"Are you kidding?" Ratchet growled. "No. _Of course not._ Enjoy it while it lasts. Consider it part of her basic training. Joining the Autobots, Interview Question 14: How comfortable are you with babysitting a busload of very large, ray-gun toting, alien children? With drivers licenses?"

Ironhide couldn't help herself; she had a good long laugh at that one. 

* * *

Jazz and Mirage had started whispering rapid-fire back and forth, talking about what Charlie had to imagine had been famous races on their own planet, and/or types of engines and styles of car body that of course there were no real comparisons for here on Earth.

Cybertronian clicks and hisses snaked and melded with English words, but Charlie heard what sounded like a lot of names and places getting translated or transliterated on the fly. 

Charlie was starting to get a sense for what her robots really meant when they called themselves 'adaptive.' They weren't just referring to some exciting technology. It didn't end at the ability to camouflage themselves as earth vehicles. They were chameleons at spark; they'd been _born _with that ability to change shapes, and it changed fundamental things about what they found normal, simple, or straight-forward. It must have even altered how they perceived language. Like: They somehow found it more sensible to talk in English when on Earth, even if that meant constantly inventing new 'English' words.

Click-croon-hiss became 'Polyhex,' and Pop-crack-hiss-hiss became 'Praxus,' while other places translated as simple words like 'Towers' or fancy schmancy words like 'Basilica,' (which Charlie was pretty sure was still English). Bumblebee might have been following along but she doubted he was saying anything even by alien radio wave, seeing as the other two weren't letting a word in edgewise. She glanced back at the car, and gave the roof a little pat. Bee quivered and eased his weight back and forward on his tires.

"Five more minutes, kay?"

Bee didn't get a chance to respond because Mirage's engine snarled to life and Jazz started hissing an alarmed, "Whoa whoa whoa, we been spotted, fly greaser on your ten!" Mirage cut his steering wheel and hit the gas, spinning around behind them to point his nose towards the exit. 

Charlie twisted back to see a man approaching them. He was clothed boot to neck in a white and navy blue track suit, and he had a smile that could melt an iceberg. A woman could make hot s'mores off that smile. Smiles that hot ought not to be taken out at a gas station, or anywhere else a spark might prove flammable. Charlie straightened in surprise, mind temporarily blanking. Then she belatedly recalled she and her 'friends' were on a secret mission south to Georgia, and also presently trespassing.

"Hey!" the guy called out, and his smile probably ought to have warned her he'd be friendly but_ damn_ she'd been distracted.

"H-hey," Charlie answered, standing straight. "Is it a problem we're here? We can go."

"Naw, y'all just fine," he laughed. "Thought I'd warn the audience things are about to get a little dull for the next hour; we're taking a break to check out the exhaust. Boring mechanics stuff." 

Charlie brightened. "That's fine, I," she laughed a little, "I actually spend a lot of time in the shop, if you can believe it."

The man appreciatively took in the three beautiful pony cars behind her, still sunny, and said, "Yeah I can believe that. That's a pretty Corvette," he selected, out of three, which meant he had excellent taste.

"Ain't she?" Charlie almost forgot it wasn't her car anymore, and glanced back. Mirage was already a hundred yards back the way they came, frozen and pointing to leave. "Right, my sister Tina's driving. Spent years in my garage until we worked out what the heck was going on with the electrical system that the engine wouldn't start."

"Husband a mechanic, then?" the guy asked.

Charlie's stomach flipped over in dismay. She twisted back to look at the guy with the sunbeam smile. Reality settled in on her. Charlie was heading south with an alien convoy on an interstate mission to group up with allies and seize a transmission tower. This mission was time sensitive, because they needed to broadcast an important message about a government or mercenary betrayal of their people. Two of their number, including the most vulnerable and important member—their injured medic—were presently waiting for them at an unknown location. And here Charlie and the other three aliens were, distinctive and easy to remember, out in the middle of nowhere, and goofing around.

"Or..." he asked with a nervous laugh, looking quietly hopeful, because this wasn't about her cars, it was a veiled pickup, "was it your_ dad's_ shop?"

Charlie grimaced more than she smiled politely. "Actually, it was _my _shop," she said, now trying to end this conversation and get away as clean as possible. "But to answer your question, I'm seeing someone."

"Oh." The guy seemed to hear 'I'm seeing someone' and didn't hear or make heads or tails of the 'my shop' bit. He also didn't catch onto the tone change, or the bite. "Long relationship?"

"Recently reunited," Charlie replied, clipped, because if you were going to lie to someone you had better use half a truth or two. "But we were going steady a couple years back."

"Well, you know, you guys seem new around here," the guy said, and he _didn't get it. _"Are you staying in Commerce? Because I'd be happy to show you around."

Which was when Jazzy—still petite, blue-haired, and female—leaned out her window and unexpectedly exploded with, _"Good grief,_ hey! Hey you! La señorita here is goin' steady with _moi_, pompadour! Now _back off_ before Mama Jazzy hasta get outta this car and whoop yo' hinny for talkin' up mah girl! Betty ain't buyin' what yo' sellin' yo! _Hyello!_ Earth to haircut, respond before I lose mah temper and plant a wet one on 'er right in front o' ya! Shoo!"

* * *

"And that," Charlie narrated as she leaned conversationally at Ironhide's window in the McDonald's parking lot, "was when 'Jazzy' went on the warpath declaring that I was 'her' girlfriend and that this 'pussy-ass' boy better run back home to his handlers."

Ratchet wheezed something that sounded suspiciously like a snicker. Ironhide was far less discrete: She would have been bent over in a deep belly laugh A) if she'd been in root mode, and B) if robots had bellies, which Charlie wasn't entirely sure of just yet. Her laughter was an uproar, either way. 

"I don't think I've ever seen a guy turn that shade of red before. Jazz's hologram is like four feet tall. I don't think he had the slightest clue what to do with 'her.' On a scale of one to ten, she's dialed to a fifteen."

"That's," Ironhide roared, "that' Jazz!"

"Suffice to say, I don't think he's ever going to live that down if he tells anyone, so the odds are he'll be taking the story to his grave."

"Hahahah-ha!"

"Should I, ya know, should I _tell _him?" Charlie asked, more amused then dismayed.

Rachet cleared his throat once, twice, and then said (over Ironhide's laughter), "Jazz? He _knows_."

"Well," Charlie shrugged helplessly and glanced over to where the sports cars were parked. "Guess I'm gay, then." Ironhide laughed even more.

"We'll," Rachet cleared his throat again, in what was becoming quite obvious was an effort not to left, "talk more later. Hurry, ah, hurry up and get your food. Wasn't-wasn't this establishment a drive-through?"

"Wanted to check on you," Charlie shrugged, patting Ironhide's windowsill and straightening, even though she was talking to Ratchet, because it'd look more natural to an observer. "Besides, I don't think the boys could have sat on a story that long, and I'd miss out on the chance to tell it. You should head out now, it'll look like I just gave you directions or something."

"Ro-roger that," Ironhide gasped through laughs, and clicked into reverse. "See ya on the road, kiddo! G'luck with em!"

* * *

Charlie went to the bathroom twice to keep up appearances (there was no other reason _not _to use the drive-through), and then bought roughly three people's worth of food.

She couldn't really be sure if all these layers of alibis and excuses were _necessary,_ but if somebody were to try tailing her and the Autobots, she wanted to be as unremarkable as possible, just some floozy with her friends driving through. The extra food would be lukewarm and a little stale later, but it was probably best anyway that she plan ahead and have lunch and dinner lined up.

She stopped by Jazz's door, even though she was pretty sure nobody cared enough about them to peek out the windows at whether Charlie actually divvied up the food. 

"Okay, so, on a scale of one to Ratchet, how angry was he?" Jazz whispered.

Charlie blinked. "How angry was _Ratchet_ on a scale rated from one to himself?" She looked out into space. "Two."

"Oh, thank Primus!"

"He—_bzzt—_didn't _believe _you..." Bumblebee lamented.

"Who?" Charlie looked between them. "Ratchet?"

"No, race-car dude," Jazz clarified. "Was just goin' through explainin' the whole 'sexism' thing to lil Bee here."

If Bumblebee resented being called 'lil' he didn't show it, too focused on the topic. "_Didn't believe—_zz—you could—fix your own car?" Bee warbled.

Charlie scoffed and grinned at him, "Wasn't the first, won't be the last. Screw them," she patted her mustang's hood. "Besides, what do I have to worry about? Apparently I'm dating Jazz, who knew? My boyfriend can officially beat up everyone else's boyfriend."

Bumblebee and Jazz squeaked. "Jazzy was just coverin' for ya, lil sister!" one sputtered, "Didn't mean anything by—!"

"Nope, nope," Charlie grinned, getting her 'aft' into the driver's seat of the mustang. "No takebacks, _'babe.'"_ She took a bite out of her first egg McMuffin and mockingly blew a kiss.

"_Woo,_ you _got_ it, sweet thang!" Jazz revved, and then started singing what Charlie could only imagine was an on-the-fly translation of a song from worlds away: "Dancin' ta Luna One and back t' our front door, day in, day out, never a stop; gonna teach ya ta groove on a dance floor; love always comes out on top!" 

Bee squawked a number of confused noises. Mirage groaned like a migraine was coming on, shifted out of park, and made to take off with or without them.

* * *

Based on how aggressively close to Jazz's rear bumper they were driving, Charlie was pretty sure someone disapproved of her dating habits.

"Oh come on, Bee," Charlie snickered. "It's still a joke. He's not, what, 'harassing' me or anything."

Bumblebee grumbled.

"I don't think I've ever met anyone with Jazz's self confidence—er, well, _ever—_but definitely not anyone that's been on _my _side before," she admitted. "C'mon, settle, it's just fun. I've, um," she scratched the back of her neck and shrugged awkwardly, "I'lve never gotten to play like that and sling jokes, flirts, or smack talk like that with somebody. Memo's too sensitive. It's a kind of thing I've only ever seen between _other people _or on TV."

Bumblebee eased up off the accelerator and had the decency to sound _slightly _guilty. "People don't think—vvsss—you can be a—vv—mechanic?"

He was still thinking about that. Charlie hesitated. "They start off assuming I'm not. Was telling Ratchet a bit about it the other day. Some people are better about it than others, when I correct them."

"That's _wrong_. You're a _great—mechanic—Charlie."_

She smiled, enjoying the simplicity of being accepted immediately and seen as normal. "Thanks, Bee."

"None of us_—_were supposed to be_—__soldiers_," Bee played his radio back and forward to pick up soundbites, and clearly reused some from his internal collection. "I'm a_—car—_not a fighter jet. (Zzt) But we didn't_—lose the war. _And I've_—__exploded—_a lot of_—fighter jets._"

"Guess I fit in then," Charlie smirked. "To the isle of misfits."

"Yes," Bumblebee agreed without hesitation, using a very emphatic soundbite. She laughed. "Charlie," he insisted. "I'm glad you're here. Charlie."

Her feelings sobered a bit, and she nodded. "I'm glad I'm here with you," she agreed. "I feel more _real _than I have since you left. I'm not leaving you again. Hey. Bee? Do you understand me? I'm not leaving again, not now, not_—not ever."_

He was quiet for a fairly long moment after that. Enough to worry her. Was he struggling for words? Had she said something wrong, or overestimated her welcome?

"You _okay_ with that?" she tried to feel out what he was thinking.

"_Yes_," Bumblebee repeated his emphatic soundbite. "Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes."

* * *

They were almost to Florida and Charlie was eating her second bag of fast food when Mirage sent Bumblee an urgent ping. [Black car, three hundred meters back.]

[They following us?] Bee kept his transmissions tightly scoped, especially when directing them behind him where a stray wave could be picked up by a tail.

[Uncertain,] Mirage reported. [Jazz?]

[Yeah, he's matchin' my fave o' Prowler's predictive algorithms at about 15% fidelity,] Jazz reported in. [Ya might remember it's usually about ~12% is when I start sendin' out the orders to go gray or redirect attention. What's ya call?]

Bumblebee vented deeply, weighing the odds. Predictive algorithms helped an agent quickly and objectively assess when a cover might be compromised, based on whether another vehicle matched enough behavioral criteria to _seem _like it could be following them.

It could easily be nothing. Humans and Cybertronians both had a habit of finding a groove behind a car going the same speed as them, and for long-distance trips this could mean a completely innocent car might tail you for hundreds of miles.

'Going gray' meant taking actions to blend in, whereas redirection meant trying to get any pursuers to follow the flashy cars—Bumblebee, Jazz, or Mirage—who were rarer car models, more expensive designs, faster, and brightly colored, allowing the duller and more mundane builds to slide past without detection.

That said, there was always a price to splitting up. If, for instance, a pursuer was a Cemetery Wind operative, they might be explicitly looking for vehicles roughly matching the size and shape of an ambulance. So, if they had their eyes already locked on the white 'delivery truck' on Ironhide's flatbed, then scattering could end up leaving Ironhide and Ratchet in a steady crosshairs and without an escort. 

[This choice is being made for me,] Bee reasoned. [We can't risk leading anybody back to Wheeljack and burning his cover. We _need _a workshop Ratch can recover at. Jazz, do you mind if I...?]

[If ya defer ta my expertise? Nah, you're right, this is my scene. Can you aim a message tight enough ta reach Ironhide & Ratch back there without the tail catching it?]

Even encrypted, the mere presence of messages in the airwaves could give them away. [Absolutely.]

[Ya short wave transmission control's a spy's envy, Bee. A'right! Here's the plan:

[Right across the state border there should be somethin' called a 'welcome station.' No real reason for one of us to evah go to one, so tell Ironhide ta accelerate ta the front of the column and pull off into it and try ta look normal. We'll have Mirage fake engine trouble and go dark on the shoulder n' and back up inta the welcome station on the far end ta join him aftah a spell.

[Now, you got my girlfriend on board, so I ain't as comfortable as I'd usually be tryin' ta pull attention onta us by lookin' dumb, fast, and surveillance aware_—]_

(Bumblebee stalwartly resisted the impulse to hit his brakes and break Jazz's nose on his rear bumper.)

[—Plus the only real tail I'm worried about is Cemetery Wind, and if it is them, any suspicious move we make'll just confirm that that truck back there's _probably _Ratchet. So we keep it gray, instead. We'll take different exits and meander off and about for an hour, and whoever he follows just keeps drivin' till they can shake 'im. You can even stop with Charlie for gas; they ain't knowin' we got a human with us, so her bein' present should throw em off ya.]

[Got it. Messaging them now. And let me tell Charlie the plan, too. She might have an idea where she and I can drive to that'll keep us in range of 'Hide.]

[Great! Don't forget to tell shnookums that Jazzy loves her!] Jazz wailed excitably, and Bee messaged back something rather rude about Jazz's dance skills, and also that:

[_Last _time Charlie had a chance to whistle at any of us, you were there, and she still picked _Ironhide._]

Which, rather than make Jazz angry, put him into a fit of giggles. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if this is girlfriend theft, or if Jazz is going to become _Charlie's_ best girl-friend and teach her all the 1337 smooth moves she needs to seduce an Autobot of her choosing. Take her under his wing, so to speak! Maybe give her some new tips and tricks for how to get Ratchet to laugh... One can dream!

**Author's Note:**

> If you like me as an Author you are free to check out my profile, or find us on [Discord!](https://discord.gg/MsSfwNb) Otherwise just leave me loads of comments. I love comments <3


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